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The Root of the Matter

Barton Seaver - The Root of the Matter

This event was on Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 2:00 pm Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Root vegetables are the star of cold-weather cooking; hearty standbys that are in peak season now.

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Recorded

Question:

When not cooking with oil, how do I prevent roasted vegetables from turning grey? Especially golden beets. And how do I get the nice crispy crust without using oil?

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Answer:

I would say start with a hot pan. And I'm hesitating a little bit on this because that's it's not really my specialty I cook with oil. I haven't done a lot of cooking without oil but I would say start with a hot pan and think also about the broiler. So what you're doing there is you're immediately exposing those sugars to very high temperatures. The sugar is naturally in the vegetables two, very high temperatures, which is going to caramelize and start that Mirage reaction very quickly cooking over very high temperatures going to do the same thing. So I think that would help and so the pan itself would start to sear those vegetables even as you put them into the oven think about a cast iron pan, something like that. Yeah, there you go. I would also Pat them dry quite a bit maybe even salt them ahead of time just a little bit to start that process of leaching out some of that moisture and then Pat them dry. And what that's gonna do is is it's gonna draw some of those more more of those sugars to the surface as well and make that caramelization make that sear a little bit easier to achieve so long as you Pat them dry just with a paper towel or something so There you go.
Barton Seaver

Barton Seaver

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