I do not like boiling vegetables. I almost despise it.
When you boil veggies, nutrients leach out into the water. The result is a mushy product containing little flavor, little color, and few nutrients. They all leaked out into the water (which I doubt is going in your drinking glass)!
Roasting, on the other hand, evaporates moisture from food – water leaves and flavor intensifies. You get caramelization, adding more flavor and sweetness. When it comes to cooking veggies, roasting is almost always the method to go with.
Well Cooked Veggies are the Height of Culinary Excellence
Okay, maybe a bit grandiose of a subtitle.
I have a hypothesis that I cannot prove but strongly believe is true: for upwards of 90% of cases where people say they don’t like a vegetable, it’s because they’ve never eaten it prepared properly.
People don’t like broccoli because their parents boiled it to death until it became a gray sludge. Some people turn away from brussels sprouts because they never had them prepared in a way that balanced their bitterness. Okra because it’s always been overcooked until slimy instead of grilled hot and fast, mushrooms because… well, you get the idea.
A bad experience with an ingredient can ruin it for someone forever. You can almost see the fear in some people’s eyes when a specific vegetable is named.
So, when cooking veggies: leave some texture – veggies usually don’t have to be cooked as long as you think they do. And when in doubt, roast!
To be fair, I can’t end without giving a shout-out to steaming. You won’t get the caramelization and flavor that you will with roasting, though it is a cooking method that will also preserve most of the nutrients in the food.