Roasted Vegetables with Bright & Crunchy Herbed Topping

Author Notes

This umami-rich roasted vegetables recipe was developed in partnership with Ajinomoto Co. Inc.

Instead of making the roasted vegetables on your holiday spread heavier with cream, butter, and cheese, make them lighter and brighter with a crunchy topping, the makings of which can reflect your tastes. The basic idea is to provide roast vegetables with a topping that’s puckery, fresh, and all around toasty-crunchy. Here, we went with lightly pickled shallots, lemon zest, parsley, and toasted pepitas and quinoa, all held together with some olive oil. You could swap the shallots for scallions or red onion, the parsley for any other herb, and the seeds for nuts or even bread crumbs. Any which way, it’s a fun, flavorful jumble that enrobes your roasted vegetables.

In order for your dish to get noticed among all the huggable cream coats, though, each vegetable needs to bring great flavor to the dish. But vegetables in the winter can be unreliable and harder to come by (maybe that’s why we cling to the dairy aisle). By adding just a little MSG to your shallot, parsley, lemon, and seed mixture, the natural flavor of each ingredient is more pronounced and works to create a perfectly balanced result. Instead of being drowned out, they shine together. (The general rule of thumb when cooking with MSG: Use about two-thirds of the table salt you'd normally use, and then add one-third MSG back in.)

We've partnered with Ajinomoto Co. Inc. to bring you a series of recipes, stories, and videos that celebrate the fifth taste: umami. You can boost this rich, savory essence in almost any dish (like these roasted vegetables!) by adding a dash of MSG, a safe-to-eat seasoning that's pure umami flavor. —Ali Slagle

Test Kitchen Notes

This recipe is featured in the story, Your Roasted Holiday Vegetables Deserve This Puckery, Crunchy Topping, sponsored by Ajinomoto. —The Editors