I decided to vegucate myself, and you can too.
I’ve always been that person who really hates vegetables.
As a kid, I was the master of making vegetables disappear off my plate without ever taking a bite, whether it involved feeding them to my dog, subtly flushing them down the toilet, or hiding them under the couch. (I know.)
I considered baked potatoes and the tomato sauce on my pizza to be an entirely adequate amount of vegetable consumption, and the older I got, the fewer actual vegetables I ate. Once I got to college, with no parents forcing me to gag down my beets, I basically subsisted on a steady diet of waffles, chicken tikka masala, and Chipotle steak bowls. After college, I moved to Turkey, where I basically spent a year trying every type of meat kebab the country had to offer, without letting a single green thing pass my lips.
Then, a few years ago, I moved to New York, where I decided that the weather being below freezing for several months a year justified a perpetual diet of melted cheese and potatoes. Within a few months, however, I started rethinking my dietary habits. For one, my college metabolism slowed down in a big way, meaning the nonstop stream of carbs, meat, and sugar I’d once thrived off of now made me sluggish and sedentary. None of my pants fit anymore. And I started actually considering the long-term impact of eating a diet composed largely of processed crap. Something had to be done.
Over the past year, I’ve made a huge effort to go from being the girl who slides the lettuce off her burgers in disgust to someone for whom vegetables are a normal part of a daily diet. Though this has meant occasionally forgoing fries for the side salad at restaurants and adding fajitas to my Chipotle order, the biggest change and challenge has been finding new ways to cook vegetables at home.
Manu Venkat / Instagram: @manu.venkat
If you hate something, you’re probably cooking it wrong.
This year, Brussels sprouts taught me two very important things. One, that bacon basically makes everything better (see below). And two, that many of the vegetables I hated as a kid were frequently just vegetables that were cooked wrong.
The crunchy, caramelized Brussels sprouts that are ubiquitous in every New York restaurant today are basically a completely different food from the bland, boiled sprouts I recall being forced to swallow as a young'un, which tasted — excuse me — of farts. Boiled Brussels sprouts are a crime against humanity. But when they’re roasted until golden with a teeny bit of brown sugar and balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of bacon and garlic, Brussels sprouts are nothing short of magical.
Too often, the vegetables we eat are overcooked, boiled, or otherwise smushed into submission in a way that robs them of their natural delicious flavors. There’s a good chance that if there’s a vegetable you hate, changing the way you cook it might change your mind.
When in doubt, roast. Everything.
Roasting is the easiest way to make your vegetables delicious, and probably the only way many vegetables should be cooked. Roasting makes vegetables the perfect level of crispy-tender, naturally sweetening and intensifying their flavor in a way even sworn veggie haters like me find it hard to dislike. Roast a whole tray of root vegetables at the start of your week and use them in every meal you make thereafter.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1nR3bdd
No comments:
Post a Comment