After the excesses of last week, I thought a little restraint was in order, so I’m sharing one of my favorite quick lunch or side dishes, lemon roasted broccoli.
If I’m honest, I am not very good at restraint when it takes the form of fat free, sugar free, seasoning free or otherwise flavourless ‘diet’ food.
The older I get the more I find value in the idea of moderation when it comes to eating. It’s the simplest and yet also the most complex food concept to figure out and live by in the current age. And it’s made all the harder by the truly massive proliferation of multinational food companies constantly offering up new convenience foods and ingredients to help us eat healthier/easier/tastier meals (only one of those three is actually true, by the way. And even then the other one is debatable if you have the smallest amount of food education).
For me, moderation means mostly eating reasonable portions of nutritious foods, in the interests of also being able to consume decent portions of treat food without it affecting my guilt levels or health too much.
Without getting too deeply into it, the key words here are ‘reasonable’ and ‘nutritious’. I do not buy into wholesale exclusion of any one ingredient or food group from my diet (if you have a dietary intolerance or allergy I understand things may be different for you), I love butter, cream, salt and sugar and use all of them liberally in my cooking. I just try not to use all of them in every meal! Sometimes I go fairly austere, others are all about indulgence and I figure between the two things kind of balance themselves out.
In the interests of moderation, I present to you this recipe (if you could even call it that) for steam oven lemon roasted broccoli.
If you haven’t joined the roasted broccoli fan club yet, see if this will convert you. Cooking the broccoli using combi steam gives the best of both worlds: frazzled, slightly charred savoury edges and soft, yielding, steamed broccoli insides. The same treatment applied to cauliflower is equally excellent.
Some will disagree, but I am very much on board with the idea of eating a huge pile of a singular vegetable as a meal. It might not be conventional, but it’s totally delicious and doesn’t take much dressing up to make things interesting.
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Here I show it with Greek yoghurt, Sriracha hot sauce and an Indian roti bread, but a fried egg and my favourite seasoning sprinkle, Shichimi Togarashi, is another favourite. And some toasted nuts scattered over either of those combinations will be a winner.
We had this for lunch a few days ago and my husband (aka a man who definitely does NOT rate a huge pile of vegetables as a meal) was surprisingly ok with it, though I doubt it would cut it for an evening meal in his eyes. If I’m flying solo at dinner time – admittedly pretty rare in this age of tiny people in the house – I would absolutely get excited about having a big bowl of roasted broccoli. And afterwards, I would not feel the least bit guilty for eating a brownie.
Moderation. It’s grand.
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Lemon Roasted Broccoli
Ingredients
- 1 head broccoli large, broken into florets
- 3 tbs olive oil
- 1 1/2 tsp flaky sea salt
- 1 lemon
Instructions
- Set your oven to 450⁰F/230⁰C, combination steam setting. If your oven has variable steam settings, use 60%. If not, don't worry! Just set to combi steam at the correct temperature and the oven will work out the humidity for you.
- Put the broccoli into a solid oven tray in a single layer – don’t crowd it too much or it won’t brown properly. Drizzle the oil over the top and sprinkle with salt. Toss to combine and put in the oven for 12-15 minutes, until the edges of the florets are getting crispy and slightly blackened.
- Remove from the oven and immediately squeeze as much or as little lemon juice as you like over the top (the juice will sizzle as it hits the oven tray, so it reduces a bit and gives a nice sharp note to the broccoli).
- Serve hot or warm. This will reheat well although you’ll lose the crisp edges if you do so.
Notes
- One large head of broccoli will serve 2-3 people for a light meal, or about 6 as a side dish.
- I have tossed leftover florets through cooked ramen noodles with ketjap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce), sesame oil and the aforementioned Shichimi Togarashi Japanese seasoning. It made for a very satisfying vegetarian dinner.
- Because broccoli heads can vary a lot in size, you’ll need to adjust the seasoning ingredients according to the amount of broccoli you have.
Nutrition
But I don’t have a steam/combi-steam oven! Preheat your oven to 230⁰C and cook the broccoli for about 20 minutes to achieve a similar result. Don’t skimp on the oil or your broccoli will get dried out and leathery on the outside.
10 Responses
435 will be fine for this dish. I preheat – if your oven won’t do so in combi mode I’d recommend preheating on a regular oven mode and switching to combi as you put the broccoli in. Placing it into a cold oven will overcook it long before it has a chance to get those lovely charred edges.
Do you preheat the oven first? With or without steam? My Miele doesn’t preheat in combi steam mode and can only heat to 435 F. Thank you
I made a variation on this using cauliflower and broccoli, with salt, slivered garlic, and hot pepper flakes, and it was ridiculously good. Treating the broc and cauli in this manner is amazing. Here is my question, and it may be a question in general for steam ovens (i am new to mine): Should I be pre-heating my steam oven? I have a Miele and when in combi mode there is not really a pre-heat cycle that I can see, and I don’t even know how pre-heating would work in a steam oven (all the steam escapes when you open the door). When I set this recipe, for example, the timer started immediately as the oven heated. The timer ran out before the oven even reached temperature. Is this a quirk of Miele or…. How do others treat pre-heating?
Works to a T. Works equally well with cauliflower and garbanzos. The steam makes it possible.
I didn’t use this recipe because i didn’t have it. I used flavored butter from Trader Joe’s, so I used plain steam in my Cusinart Steam/Toaster oven at 210F for 12 mins, it was nowhere near done. I had to keep putting in back in eventually probably 30 mins altogether! Will you please give fahrenheit temps for your recipes, and tray/shelf placement. Thank you, so much help needed.
I can’t see why not, just be wary that some frozen veg have a lot of moisture/water on them, which could make your finished dish a bit mushy.
Sounds delish! Do you think this approach could work with frozen veg?
Hi Emily, thanks for your reply. I didn’t realize Miele was so "generous" 😀. I never made any gratins or lasagne in this oven. Will have to try!
Hi Iza. In your case I would use the convection setting with steam here (to give you ‘convection steam’ mode). In all my combination steam recipes, when I say combination steam plus x% steam, I’m referring to the fan forced/convection mode. This keeps things simple as the steam oven I do most of my cooking in (like a lot of others on the market) doesn’t offer the option of plain/static heat or grill with steam. Lucky you to have the alternatives if you want to use them! I bet gratins, lasagne or baked pasta dishes done with grill + steam would be fabulous. 🙂
Hello,
In a combination oven, which function did you use with the 60% steam? My Miele oven can do that combined with a fan assisted oven (convection) or plain heat top and bottom or grill. Thank you, Iza