A Zero-Effort Upgrade for the Better Roasted Vegetables

Roasted vegetables are my favorite side dish, especially during the busy fall and winter months when I need to get dinner on the table with minimal effort quickly. What I love most about them is how low-maintenance they are: Toss a mix of vegetables with olive oil on a sheet pan, season with salt and pepper, and roast until delicious. It can't get better than that. Or can it?

Well, there's a trick I recently learned that turns pretty basic (albeit delicious) roasted vegetables into something spectacular with zero effort. It’s as easy as preheating your sheet pan along with the oven.

I put my sheet pan into a cold oven and set it to 400°F. After the oven comes to temperature, I preheat the sheet pan for five to 10 minutes longer. During this time, you can chop and season the vegetables.

Then I add the veggies to the hot sheet pan (be careful, it'll be very hot!). They begin to crisp up immediately, creating a beautiful golden, crunchy exterior.

This genius trick is so easy and genuinely life-changing. You only have to worry about trying not to eat all of the roasted veggies before dinner is served! 

Why This Smart Tip Works

First, roasted vegetables are so good because the hot oven caramelizes the sugars in the vegetables, making them deeply flavored. Preheating the sheet pan makes this happen faster and better, coaxing even more flavor.

Second, the extra heat on the sheet pan helps to crisp the vegetables even more. For example, take broccoli. Have you ever roasted broccoli and found it steamed, not browned? That's because the sheet pan and the oven never got hot enough. But add the florets to a hot sheet pan, and the edges crisp up beautifully, adding a lovely texture.

My 4 Tips Before You Try This Upgrade

1. Use a high-quality sheet pan: The key is to use a high-quality rimmed sheet pan that won’t buckle or bend when it gets hot. My favorites are from Nordic Ware—I own a big stack of them. Its quarter sheet pans are particularly handy since I can fit a few in my oven at once, allowing me to roast vegetables at different cooking times simultaneously.

2. Oil the sheet pan: Before I preheat the sheet pan, I add a very thin layer of olive oil or avocado oil on top. This will help the vegetables crisp even more. If you want to use less oil, you can simply preheat the sheet pan as is. Just make sure that your vegetables are coated with oil before adding them to the sheet pan so they don't stick.

3. Separate your vegetables: Separate the vegetables on the sheet pan so that there is space around each piece. Crowding will cause the vegetables to steam instead of crisp. Once the veggies hit the oven, I stir them once or twice to ensure maximum crispiness all around.

4. Keep an eye on them: Preheating the sheet pan won’t shorten the cooking time by much, but check them often because the edges will brown more quickly.