During a group vacation to Italy a few years ago, a very simple side dish, roasted broccoli, became one of the food highlights of the entire trip. This simple and delicious dish inspired our Broccoli Slaw; however, the roasted broccoli dish itself has never made an appearance here as a featured recipe – this misstep will now be corrected.
When Epicurious featured a recipe for a Crispy, Cheesy Broccoli Gratin, Kyle saw the opportunity to pay homage to Italy’s roasted broccoli dish while highlighting the cheesy deliciousness of the Epicurious recipe.
The Epicurious recipe takes the broccoli gratin out of the traditional casserole dish and transplants it onto a sheet pan. By simply changing the cooking vessel, the surface area of the dish nearly doubles – thus ramping up the ratio of cheesy-crumb topping to roasted broccoli. Yes to cheese, please!
The true genius of this recipe is the added instruction of preheating the sheet pan right along with the preheating of the oven. This way the pan is scalding hot when you add the broccoli, giving you a great sear and increasing the caramelization of the veggies while they roast. Kyle will be using this brilliant, yet simple method for all his veggie roasting in the future.
A few minor tweaks were made to the recipe. Kyle added a dash of crushed red pepper flake and changed the ratio of the cheddar and parmesan cheese. He wanted to “bump up the parm” to pay homage to the stellar roasted broccoli he enjoyed while on vacation. He also eliminated the butter, opting to use all olive oil instead of the mix of the two fats. This helped eliminate the step of melting the butter in the ramekin in the oven while the broccoli roasts.
In order to create a gluten free recipe, he substituted the bread crumbs for crushed up potato chips. This is one of our favorite GF recipe hacks – the potato chips really hold their body and crunch better in recipes than gluten free breadcrumbs.
Even though the original recipe recommends roasting the broccoli for 15 minutes – Kyle chose to roast it a tad longer in order to get a deeper char on the broccoli. However, you can cook it to your liking, more char, less char – all good. The broiling step doesn’t really further cook the broccoli – so be sure it is cooked to perfection before you move on to broiling.
Even though the cheesy-potato chip crumb topping is delicious on the broccoli, perhaps the best part of the recipe is all of the little clusters of crumbs that fall directly onto the sheet pan. The heat of the pan melts and fricos the cheese (and who doesn’t love some crispy, cheesy frico!). This takes the recipe to a whole new level! Enjoy!
Adapted from Epicurious.
- 1¼ pounds broccoli florets (I like leaving about 1 inch of the stem attached)
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ⅓ cup ground potato chips from about 1 ½ cups potato chips
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- Dash of crushed red pepper flakes
- ½ cup grated Cheddar cheese
- ½ cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
- Adjust one oven rack to the upper-middle position and another rack to the middle position. Place a rimmed sheet pan on the middle rack and preheat the oven to 425°F.
- Toss the broccoli florets with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and salt in a medium-size bowl. Turn the broccoli out onto the hot sheet pan (it should sizzle!) and roast until the bottom of the florets are nicely browned, about 15 to 20 minutes.
- Place the potato chip crumbs in a medium-size bowl, add the remaining 2 tablespoons olive olive oil, the garlic, and the red pepper and toss with a fork. Add the Cheddar and Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses and toss to combine.
- Remove the sheet pan from the oven and sprinkle the broccoli with the cheesy crumb mixture. Turn the broiler to high and place the sheet pan on the upper rack. Broil until the cheese is melted and browned, 1 to 2 minutes (watch the bread crumbs closely as broiler intensities vary and you don’t want them to burn). Remove from the oven, transfer to a platter—making sure to scrape up all of the crispy, crunchy cheesy bits—and serve.
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