Prepared and cooked well, this recipe gives you wedges of slightly firm beets, potatoes, carrots, and onions. But, if you’re not careful in preparing (that is, cutting to the right sizes)—and roasting—these succulent morsels, you run the danger of ending up with sweet, mushy, charcoal-like vegetable tidbits, rather than the sizeable chunks of delectable vegetables that they should be.
You can experiment with the sweetness of the vegetables, adding balsamic vinegar (I have some from Modena, Italy . . . this will make them mighty sweet, depending on length of roasting time), or merely adding a bit of salt to bring out the flavor (my preference). I also like to experiment with red wine vinegar (see here for a recipe from The Spruce Eats)—not much sweet, and great tang.
FoodWISE, it helps to harvest vegetables at precisely the peak of maturity, with roots having been fed with nourishing manures and/or composts, maybe even with a celestial connection as in biodynamic practice. Understanding when and why and how our food arrives on our table really matters in the case of vegetables—we tend to eat them whole anyway, much of the flavor being innate: the sweetness of potato and yam, the rustic taste of mature beets (my favorite vegetable), the fruitiness of carrots. [read here for, why are my carrots so bitter?]
Preparation
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Put ¼ cup olive oil and salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add vegetables and toss until they are lightly coated.
Transfer vegetables to a baking sheet and sprinkle with herbs, if desired. Make sure there is airspace around each piece
Set the sheets on the middle or lowest racks in the oven. Check at 15 minutes by removing sheets from the oven and stirring the vegetables (turning over individual pieces, if possible). Return to oven.
Check again after 7–8 minutes, then another 7–8 minutes. Use a knife or fork to check for doneness.
Transfer to glass serving dishes, and immediately stir in chopped parsley if you like. Note that these wonderful morsels can be served either hot or at room temperature.