Incredible Crispy Roasted Leeks (new favorite side dish)

I’ve got another great vegetable side dish option for you today. These wild looking crispy roasted leeks make for an absolutely stunning vegetable side and they need nothing more than olive oil, salt, and pepper to really shine. Leeks tend to not get a ton of attention on our standard dinner tables, playing second (or third? fourth?) fiddle to the likes of the mighty carrot, ubiquitous squash, and omnipresent potato. When it comes to the members of the allium family, leeks don’t seem to grab hold of the spotlight as readily as say, onions and garlic do.

Today, however, we’ll give them their due. We’ll talk about how to roast leeks until they’re tender towards their root ends and shatteringly crispy up at their tops. Really really good. You can read on for a little more about these leeks, or just jump ahead to the recipe. Choice is yours!

Roasted Leeks 101

I’ve never really cut and/or cooked leeks like this before. Now, I’m sitting here wondering what the heck has taken me so long to come around to it. IT’S SO COOL JUST LOOK AT THEM. It’s that ugly/beautiful thing they’ve got going on that I find so attractive. Like, will I hurt myself if I partake of these raggedy looking things?

No, I am happy to report. You will do do such thing. In fact, you may just find that, upon trying this recipe, you will be introduced to a new love. That’s a really nice thought, I think. A new culinary love of your life could be living right inside this little blog post and you won’t know until you give it a go.

Or, you could hate them I dunno. But probably not.

What do leeks taste like?

Okay, so leeks are a member of the allium family. Same squad as onions, garlic, shallots, scallions, ramps (my favorite!), and the like. So, that little factoid alone hints at their potential for utter deliciousness right? Because onions and garlic are DELICIOUS. I can’t imaging my cooking life without them, to be honest. And it only follows that any member of their immediate or extended family would also follow suit. Leeks do that, they follow in the tasty footsteps of their allium brethren so so well.

When it comes to the final product, these roasted leeks actually remind me of roasted asparagus in a way. They get that crisp/tender almost french fry-esque vibe which is good eats all the way through.

You’ll find that the bottoms, the parts closer to the root ends, will get soft and tender, buttery and very melt-in-your-mouthable. The tips, however, are where things get really wild. They contain significantly less moisture and therefore will sort of go the other direction. They will darken and begin to look a bit menacing, almost. They’ll crisp up and get all craggy and jagged which is just the very best thing.

So again, to explain to the best of my ability, the end up tasting like oniony roasted asparagus. There, someone hand me a James Beard Award for that.

How to clean leeks

Leeks are tricky. They’re grown in very sandy soil and, thanks to their oniony layered stratification, they really hold on to that dirt. Maybe more than any other veggie that comes to mind, leeks really do take a little extra time to get nice and clean. Because let’s be real – no one wants a mouthful of sand any any point. No, never ever is that a good thing. What a bad mouthfeel that would be! (I’ve now used the word “mouthfeel” in two consecutive posts. Woo).

As such, it’s important to clean your leeks. Since we’re not chopping the leeks into disks and rings, as is a bit more common, we’ll just halve them lengthwise and then submerge them in a big dish of water. The water will clean and force that gritty sand out from under all of those layers just fine. Use your fingers to help work it in there, flushing the dirt out as best you can. Then, give them a final rinse and dry them on some paper towels or a kitchen towel. Now, you’re ready for business.

What to serve with these Roasted Leeks

This recipe is clutch because it’s basically, at the highest level, a good-for-you green thing that will perfectly support and complement anything and everything with which you choose to serve it.

That said, here are some ideas that would look especially fetching on a big spread, right alongside these savage looking things. Just in case you need some good main course, soup, and/or salad inspiration.

I’d love to see these sidled up next to a big bowl of my very favorite pantry pasta or my Blushing Italian Sausage and Rigatoni Bake, or the Ultimate Pappardelle Bolognese or simpler Chicken Bolognese. If you’re looking to head down more of a low-carb road, and pasta doesn’t exactly jive with your dietary plans, then maybe try serving these roasted leeks with my Brown Sugar Chili Baked Chicken Wings or these Chili Garlic Butter Steak and Mushroom Bites.

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What You’ll Need

Three ingredients. That’s it! Two of which I don’t actually even count as “ingredients,” preferring instead to think of them as “tools.” Let’s be honest guys – we need cooking oil and salt/pepper as much as we need the sharp knife to cut the veggies and the dish in which to roast them.

Anyway, I digress a bit. So, you could really season these babies to high heaven if that’s what the spirits are moving you to do. You could make them garlicky by dusting them with a little garlic powder. I don’t recommend fresh garlic, as it will undoubtedly burn on you in such a screaming-hot oven. You could use a nice BBQ spice blend. Italian seasoning. Creole Seasoning. Greek Seasoning. Togarashi. Berbere. Za’atar. Garam Masala. Lime zest and chili powder. You get it.

For the sake of simply illuminating a very rad cutting + cooking method, we’re sticking to just salt and pepper today. But when it comes to the actual spices you choose to wield, just go wherever the wind blows you.

INGREDIENTS

2 whole leeks, halved lengthwise (keep the roots intact, they help hold things together)

Olive oil, for coating

Salt and pepper, as needed and to taste (I use about ½ tsp salt for this recipe)

How to make crispy roasted leeks

This recipe is so much more about the method we’ll employ than anything else. It’s not about gilding any lilies with special extras and frilly bits and bobs to hide the actual thing. No, here we’re simply taking a different look at leeks and trying out a new way of cutting and cooking and serving them. We’ll leave them wild and ragged looking, almost like we walked right into my Low Country backyard and plucked a frilly palm frond right off the ground.

That’s not what we’re doing, of course, don’t worry. Here’s what we’ll actually be doing.

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position.

Place the halved leeks into a pan of water and, using your fingers, just move them around a little bit, allowing the water to run through the layers and remove the sand/grit. Give them a final rinse under running water and then dry them on paper towels. 

Using the top of your knife, slice the deep green halves of the leeks into a few thinner strands, creating a wilder, more palm-like effect (you can skip this, I just like the way it looks and you get more crunchy parts). 

Coat the leeks, as thoroughly as you can, with olive oil and season with salt and pepper all over. Place them in/on a large roasting pan or sheet pan and roast until very golden brown on the tops and nice and buttery/tender toward the root ends; about 20 to 25 minutes. 

Enjoy either warm or at room temperature. These will hold their crunch even after they’ve come down to room temp, so you can make them ahead/in advance of your planned meal time, if you like. They will, however, lose their crunch after refrigerating. 

If you like the looks of these Whole Roasted Leeks, you might also enjoy:

Parmesan Baked Zucchini

Sticky Hot Honey Buttered Carrots with Ricotta

Garlicky Lemon Pepper Roasted Asparagus

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