Roasted Summer Vegetable and Rice Casserole

06

Roasted vegetables are pretty much the bee’s knees, right? Even my 4 year old knows this. I remember a while back, my sister was saying she doesn’t like broccoli (and I will admit it is high on my least-favorite vegetables list, too) and Zachary, appalled, said, “WELL HAVE YOU HAD IT ROASTED?! It’s soooo yummy roasted, with a little lemon on it.” My little chef.

When I saw this recipe on both Jessica and Josie’s blogs, it reminded me a lot of this zucchini rice gratin that I have made a few times (once, where I added chicken and turned it into a main course, like this dish), which made me want to roast the vegetables in this, too. It’s true that roasting the vegetables requires a little more work, but since I just did it at the same time the brown rice was cooking, it didn’t add any additional time-to-table. In fact, I baked the casserole for less time overall, so it actually shortened the total time.  Now, this still does take a bit of time to make, since brown rice takes a good 40 minutes to cook and then you also need to bake the casserole, but it’s really easy, worth it, and I see no reason you couldn’t make this in advance and then pop it in the oven before serving.

One of my favorite things about this recipe is that even though it’s a casserole, it uses summer vegetables and really doesn’t have that “heavy” feeling casseroles often have. I bulked up the vegetables even more and, like Josie, added chicken to it (which I also roasted at the same time as the vegetables because I am all about efficiency). You could certainly leave the chicken out and make this a great vegetarian main dish, though.

(For the record, I hate cottage cheese, but it is totally fine in something like this, trust me. If you are worried about the curds, you could probably process it to get rid of most of them, but honestly, you won’t really notice them.)

Roasted Summer Vegetable and Rice Casserole

6 thoughts on “Roasted Summer Vegetable and Rice Casserole

  1. Seriously, roasting is magic. It’s how I got my cousin to like broccoli too. And last night we had roasted yukon golds and both my boys were oohing and aahing. It’s just salt, pepper, and oil!

  2. I love it, when I read a recipe and I am TOTALLY surprised. I was expecting something less hearty and a bit—-well to be honest—ho hum. Boy Howdy was I wrong. lol.
    I had to pin it. It’s a wonderful summer casserole.

  3. Hi! I know you haven’t posted here in a while so perhaps this comment is just going out to the void, but I just wanted to drop you a note to say that I bookmarked this recipe ages ago and have made it a few times, at least twice each summer. It’s just so flavorful and hearty, but not too heavy for a hot summer dinner either. So, thanks for sharing it!

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