Vegetable Au Gratin
Vegetables baked to perfection in an irresistible creamy sauce, and then topped with cheese to get a beautiful golden crust. Vegetable au gratin is comfort food baked with cheese.
Hello HTS Community
Au gratin is a french technique to achieve a golden brown crust with either buttered breadcrumbs or cheese. The most common au gratin eaten worldwide is made with potatoes and a garlic infused sauce, usually served as a side dish during the holiday season. To make it on a healthier side, I decided to follow the basic technique, but, with vegetables.
To make my vegetable au gratin, I am using plenty of veggies, such as mushrooms, carrots, french beans, green peas and broccoli. You can add or replace any of these vegetables with locally available vegetables, such as zucchini, cauliflower, etc. These vegetables will be covered with a creamy béchamel sauce and then baked, followed by grating cheese and then baking again to get a golden crust. This easy cheesy recipe is an easy way to incorporate vegetables in diets of people who do not consume much of them.
There are different recipes available on the internet, with or without cheese, with milk or cream, garlic rubbed on dish or not, vegetables precooked in milk or later in the oven…. I can go on. It might get difficult to choose the right one, and I suggest we start with the easiest one.
Some other easy french recipes that you can easily try at home are Palmiers– heart sugar cookies and Croissants.
| Prep time: 10 minutes | Cooking time: 50 minutes | Total time: 60 minutes |
Ingredients
- Vegetables
- Mushrooms- 1 cup, chopped
- French beans- 1 cup, chopped
- Broccoli- 1 cup, chopped
- Carrots- 1/2 cup, chopped
- Green peas- 1/3 cup
- Butter- 2 tablespoons, more for greasing
- Garlic- 3 cloves, chopped
- All purpose flour- 1/4 cup
- Milk- 2 cups
- Black pepper- 1/8 teaspoon
- Thyme- 1/8 teaspoon
- Oregano- 1/8 teaspoon
- Nutmeg- 1/8 teaspoon
- Salt- to taste
- Cheese- 75g, grated
Steps to make vegetable au gratin:
- Start with rubbing a clove of garlic on the baking dish, and then greasing with butter. Add all the chopped vegetables into the dish and mix. Set aside.
- To make the creamy béchamel sauce, in a pan add butter and garlic, followed by all purpose flour and mix using a whisk. Add more butter if you see a lot of lumps.
- Now gradually pour milk in the pan and keep whisking to avoid formation of lumps. The heat should be at the minimum.
- To the sauce now add salt and dry herbs with nutmeg. Switch off the heat and pour this sauce over the vegetables in the baking dish. Cover with aluminium foil.
- Bake this in a pre heated oven for 30 minutes at 180 degree celsius.
- Take out the dish and spread cheese evenly, and then bake again for 10 minutes with the top coil of the oven to get a golden cheese top. Serve with garlic bread.
