Some basic veggie preparations for people who need to cook more veggies

Few things of note. I am a chef, so some of these ingredients may not be attainable. If you can't get something I recommend, don't worry about it. If I say chili flake, I mean pretty much any dried chili seeds. I usually use pasilla or guajillo when I have them. You can get a bag of either of these dried chiles for a couple bucks in the "ethnic" section of the grocery store. Cheapest and best chili powder in the store is buying those dried chilis and blending them. Any of these recipes can be added to pretty easily, these aren't set in stone recipes, rather bases for you to explore further. For example, I hate most common dried seasonings as far as veggies go. Garlic, onion powder, dried herbs and such, all those take away from the fresh flavor I like in veggies, so I don't use them much. However, you may find that you love onion and garlic powder on your food. You may find that you like a different oil in a recipe than me, and that's cool! Also, these aren't vegan recipes, but could easily be converted

Roasted brusselsprouts

1. Get a flat baking sheet. A warped baking sheet will actually mess with this recipe quite a bit. Put it in your oven and preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Stem and half your brusselsprouts, keep them in a bowl for later. Mince/grate/slice a shallot and toss it in the same bowl. Chop the shallot however you prefer them. If you like garlic, DO NOT add it at this stage, otherwise your garlic will all burn in the oven. For this reason, I don't add garlic to my brusselsprouts, and just lean on the shallot to give the onion/garlic flavor.

3. Pour in olive oil or any other good tasting oil, and gently toss. Don't wanna break all the leaves off, you just want the oil to be evenly distributed.

4. Season brusselsprouts with salt, ground pepper, paprika, and chili flakes, and toss the bowl. Do this after oiling, otherwise it's way harder to get everything even.

5. Pull out your hot oven pan, and set your brusselsprouts down on the pan face side down. This is labor intensive, but makes the final sprout way better.

6. Throw it back in the oven for 20 minute or so, you want to pull them out when they're looking nice and brown.

7. Finish with a light drizzle of olive oil and paprika

Also, a note on brusselsprouts. You will find recipes online telling you to deep fry brusselsprouts. Deep frying brusselsprouts at home is a god awful idea, they have too much water in them. It's a great way to have oil covering your entire kitchen and be dissapointed because it's still not as good as roasting like this.

Steamed brocolli

1. Frozen or fresh, doesn't matter. Boil some water and throw your brocolli over it with a steamer basket. Let steam for 7 minutes or so. Finish by tossing them in olive oil and/or butter, salt, pepper, paprika, and mushroom powder if you have any dried mushrooms. You can add more to these, I really enjoy adding lemon pepper seasoning. Cheesy broccoli is also better this way since it maintains the crunch. One of my favorite ways to flavor this is making either a lemon-honey emulsion (Honey, lemon juice, salt, pepper, a sweet pink\white wine, a touch of soy sauce, shake the shit out of it in a bottle.) Another variant of this is lime, agave, cumin and a pinch of those ground up flying ants. Yes, some bugs really are worth adding to your cooking if you can get them. The flying ants are a popular ingredient in Oaxaca for a reason. It has a citrusy yet strongly umami taste, kinda like chinese fermented black beans, it's great. Very cheap, and an ingredient that once you try it you love eating bugs.

Roasted carrots

1. Rinse fresh carrots and cut them into coins. You can peel them, but I find that the skin bitterness works with the rest of the flavor I put down. Also, frozen carrots aren't worth trying to roast. Just microwave them if they're not fresh.

2. Toss in butter, salt, pepper, chili flakes, some dried microplaned chiles, brown sugar and dried ant powder if you have it. If you happen to be eating any fruit in the moment, squeeze some of that juice in, it's tasty and different.

3. Roast carrots at 425 degrees for 25 minutes

4. Pull carrots out of the oven, and finish with honey or agave. If you use agave, skip the brown sugar. But definitely use agave if you're using any dried ant powder. Agave is like 5x sweeter than honey, so it can work really well.

Spinach

I don't recomend making spinach on its own, it's just too hard to get truly right imo. HOWEVER, adding it as an ingredient to something else is a great idea. Toss spinach in with your pasta when you finish cooking it and cook it with your sauce. However, IF you're going to, this is a decent way.

1. Butter in a pan, fry off some garlic, a bit of shallots, and red pepper flakes in the pan. I'd recommend using processed chili flakes for smaller red pieces, the red and white of the aromatics makes it look way better and taste better too. Try not to soften anything, you want them kinda fried. Add a splash of soy sauce and salt at this point.

2. Add a shit ton of spinach. Shit shrinks like crazy, so use a big pan.

3. Cook with the aromatic butter for 2 minutes and pull off the heat. Finish with pepper.

Potatoes

This is a necessary food prep thing. You start doing it and you never go back. Either bake and/or boil your potatoes for the week and keep them in your fridge to be used when needed. Example of this is baking off 8 potatoes for me and my partner to eat throughout the week. Now, I have a baked potato that all I have to do for it to be ready is microwave it. If they're smaller potatoes, I can make smashed potatoes at a moments notice and those are the absolute shit. You can instantly roast off boiled potatoes, or mash them and have a 3 minutes mashed potato throughout the week. Same thing goes for sweet potatoes. Also, longer you bake potatoes, the better they taste, so you can get really good baked potatoes really easy.

Sweet potato fries

1. Chop sweet potato into fries

2. (optional) toss sweet potatoes in potato or corn starch. This will give you normal potato fry crunch if you do this

3. Season with salt, pepper, chili flake, a proportionally small amount of cumin, and olive oil.

4. Roast at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. If you have an air fryer or a convection oven, take off 5 minutes. Longer you cook these, the more your sweet potatoes will release sweetness.

5. Check sweet potatoes for texture. If you tossed them in starch, they're probably done at this point. No matter what, let them cool for about 5 minutes on a cooling rack, and throw your empty pan back in the oven to heat up. If you're still going, raise your oven temperature to 450 degrees.

6. Pull out your pan again and throw your sweet potatoes back in for another 10-15 minutes to crisp up, replenishing the oil in the pan. Doing a double bake like this makes the sweet potatoes crispier. You can repeat the process as much as you'd like, but it stops being useful after about 4 passes. You can do this with pretty much any starch to make them crispier.

Arugula/rocket

I don't cook this one, I'm just picky with raw greens. Arugula is related to spinach, but has this really pleasant black pepper flavor that makes me enjoy having it on my sandwiches or even for salads. This is a more expensive green, but it can be had at decent prices in the right time and place.

Sauteed green Beans

This is for fresh green beans, if your green beans are canned or frozen, don't bother trying this because there's no way to make the texture right

1. Butter in pan, fry shallots, garlic, and red bell pepper, and chili flakes with salt and soy sauce/worcherster sauce in a pan. Thinly sliced sun dried tomatoes also make a pleasant addition at this point if you have them.

2. Crank the heat on your pan and add fresh green beans. Fry them aggressively, you wanna keep them moving. The high heat brings a lot of good flavors out of the green beans quickly. Sautee for about 5 minutes or until your green beans are cooked through but still have a pleasant crunch.

3. Remove from heat, finish with white pepper and a very light sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Cheese is optional, but the white on top makes it look really pretty and if you use a SMALL amount, it's a good flavor additive.

I could probably come up with more, but my arthritis hands are telling me to stop typing so