Salad with Roasted Vegetables – While salads generally use all raw vegetables, this salad is filled with savory and delicious roasted vegetables! Full of flavor, and much easier to digest for those with sensitive stomachs, this salad is definitely one to try.
Looking to get in more plant-based nutrients throughout the day? With six types of veggies in this salad alone, this recipe is bursting with phytonutrients! Ready for all the details? Keep reading!
Salad with Roasted Vegetables
While many salads are better suited as an appetizer or side dish, this Salad with Roasted Vegetables is most definitely an entree salad. This recipe is full of parsnips, carrots, radishes, onions, bell peppers, and arugula, and topped off with a garlic herb dressing. A big plate of this dish, and you’re sure to be filled for hours!
How to Roast Vegetables
Like mentioned above, the vegetables in this salad are roasted to a soft and savory perfection. And in my book, one of the best ways to roast veggies is in the oven! So, what’s the best method to achieve the absolute BEST roasted vegetables? Here are my top tips…
Chop Vegetables Into Small, Thin Pieces
The first and one of the most important tips I always give for achieving the best roasted vegetables is to begin with veggies that are chopped into small, thin pieces. Too large, and you’ll risk overcooking the outside while the inside remains raw. Of course, you also don’t want to chop them paper thin where there’s nothing left to bite into. Pieces around this size seem to be a happy medium.
Believe it or not, the knife you use has a lot to do with how thin and exact you can cut your pieces…at least how easily you can do so. We absolutely love the Pampered Chef Santuko Knife for all our fruit and veggie slicing. Click here to try it out for yourself!
Use Only the Highest Quality Oils
In this recipe, I decided to use olive oil. The acronym EVOO might have been made popular by cooking personality Rachel Ray, but extra-virgin olive oil has been a mainstay of the Mediterranean diet and is one of the oldest known culinary oils.
Extra-virgin olive oil contains predominately monounsaturated fat. It also contains antioxidants and flavonoids that help prevent bad LDL cholesterol from oxidizing and becoming particularly dangerous to your blood vessels.
Not only is it important to use healthy cooking oils, but sourcing them from companies that use pure and high quality ingredients is also of high importance. We love Primal Kitchen for this very reason! Click here to buy their EVOO!
While we think olive oil adds a delicious flavor to this recipe, you’re welcome to use other oils like avocado oil or coconut oil as well. Here is an article covering the best oils to cook with.
Leave Space Between Veggies
Most people wouldn’t think to leave space between their veggies, as cooking veggies is nothing like baking cookies where the dough easily morphs together However, leaving enough space between your veggies, helps them to crisp more effectively, and avoid the steaming effect that may leave veggies droopy and soggy.
Our suggestion is to use a large enough pan (or multiple smaller pans) for all veggies to sit side by side, in a single layer on your pan.
Allow Vegetables to Crisp
One thing to remember when following recipes is that there are numerous factors that may effect a recipe’s finished product. For example, baking is greatly effected by one’s altitude. This may not only require recipe modifications, but may also call for shorter, or longer cook times.
When roasting vegetables, there are many factors that may effect the finished product, including how well your oven retains heat, to where the rack is in the oven, and so much more. Because of this, we encourage you to use our instructions as guidance, not a hard-and-fast rule. Check on your veggies often, and only remove once beginning to crips, whether this takes shorter or longer than the instructions call for.
Garlic Herb Dressing
This Garlic Herb Dressing includes both garlic, and hemp seeds. Both incredible sources of health benefits and nutrition!
Garlic is known universally as the stinking rose, a term dating back to Greek and Roman times. But despite the connotation this name may have, this garlic herb dressing is anything but “stinky”. Full of fresh herbs, lemon juice, and hemp seeds, this Garlic Herb Dressing is refreshing, and oh-so craveworthy. If you love dipping hot crusty bread into sweet, mellow and butter-like roasted garlic I guarantee you’ll fall in love with this dressing!
Despite adding a rich and full-bodied texture to salad dressings and sauces when roasted, there are many benefits to consuming garlic as well…
Benefits of Garlic
Garlic has been used medicinally for years now for a variety of purposes! The list could go on-and-on. However, here are some of the ways garlic has been studied to offer some pretty substantial health benefits…
May Help to Reduce Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
There is a compound in garlic called methyl allyl trisulfide, which has the ability to lower blood pressure. This works by dilating blood vessel walls. Garlic also lowers your “bad” LDL cholesterol and prevents the cholesterol in your blood from oxidizing. Oxidized cholesterol, rather than cholesterol itself is the REAL problem. This is because it is the oxidized cholesterol that encourages plaque deposits on your arterial walls. This, in turn, leads to heart disease.
Can Aid in Boosting the Immune System
Garlic has been studied to boost the immune system. This can make one less likely to pick up illnesses, and quicker to fight them off when you are sick. Because of this, many people even take garlic supplements for daily prevention! Read more here.
Has Antimicrobial Properties
Allicin, a property of garlic found when a fresh clove is crushed (also sold in extractive forms) has long been used for its antimicrobial properties! Because of this, many people (including myself) have seen drastic improvements in their SIBO when using Allicin as an active part of their treatment plan.
There are plenty of other health benefits attributed to the “stinking rose” (you can read more about the health benefits of garlic HERE),
Benefits of Hemp Seeds
Hemp seeds are one of the newer superfoods I have discovered only in the last few years. Ever since I was introduced to the health benefits of hemp seeds I have been looking to sneak these itty bitty little guys into my recipes here and there.
We have an entire article all about the benefits of Hemp Seeds that you can check out by clicking here!
I find hemp seeds work particularly well as a mayo substitute when making creamy salad dressings, which is why I use them as the creamy base for my Garlic Herb Dressing below…
Ready for the full recipe? Let’s get into it!
PrintSalad with Roasted Vegetables
Full of flavor, and much easier to digest for those with sensitive stomachs, this Salad with Roasted Vegetables is definitely one to try.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 50 minutes
- Total Time: 65 minutes
- Yield: 4
- Category: Salad
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Ingredients
Salad with Roasted Vegetables
- 3 parsnips, peeled and sliced lengthwise into 1 1/2 –inch long strips
- 5 carrots, peeled and sliced lengthwise into 1 1/2-inch long strips
- 1 cup sweet or red onions, sliced
- 2 red bell peppers, sliced into medium-thin strips
- 10 radishes, sliced
- 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
- Unrefined sea salt, to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 7 ounces arugula, at room temperature
Garlic Herb Dressing
- 1 whole head garlic
- 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, divided
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/3 cup hemp seeds
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
- Unrefined sea salt, to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Instructions
Salad with Roasted Vegetables
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Arrange the parsnips, carrots, onions, bell peppers and radishes on top of the baking sheet; drizzle with olive oil and gently toss to coat.
- Season vegetables with salt and pepper to taste.
- Roast vegetables for about 35 minutes, or until desired doneness *see notes for a time saving tip!
- Remove vegetables from oven and set aside to cool.
- Place arugula in a large salad bowl.
- Arrange the roasted vegetables on top of the arugula.
- Serve salad at room temperature with the “Garlic Herb Dressing” (recipe below). Enjoy!
Garlic Herb Dressing
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Remove the outer papery covering of the garlic, but leave the covering on the individual cloves.
- Use a sharp knife to slice the top of the head so that most of the cloves are exposed.
- Place the garlic in a ramekin and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil; season with salt to taste.
- Cover the ramekin with aluminum foil and place the garlic in the oven.
- Roast the garlic for 50 to 55 minutes, until garlic is completely soft and slightly brown. Remove garlic from oven and set aside to cool, reserving the remaining olive oil.
- Use a knife to remove the roasted garlic cloves from the head and transfer the garlic along with as much of the reserved olive oil as you can to a high-speed blender.
- Add the lemon juice, 1/3 cup of the oil, hemp seeds and basil.
- Blend until dressing is smooth and creamy.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle on salad.
Notes
*You can roast the garlic for the vinaigrette at the same time you roast the other veggies for the salad.
Keywords: Salad with Roasted Vegetables
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