Name: Roasted Asparagus
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients: 1 bunch Asparagus; 5-8 Cloves Garlic (roughly chopped ); 1/4 tsp Kosher Salt; 1/8 tsp Black Pepper; 2 Tbl Melted Bacon Fat (or Oil); Melted Butter; Parmesan Cheese (as desired)

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Roasted Asparagus with Garlic, Salt & Pepper, Parmesan Cheese with Melted butter drizzled over. This side dish takes 12–15 minutes to cook and is done almost the same way as Roasted Broccoli. In fact, you can include the Asparagus with Roasted Broccoli halfway through cooking for a Roasted Broccoli & Asparagus side dish.

How to pick out Asparagus

Look for Asparagus that can stand up on their own with no limping or wilting. The tips should be dry, closed, and compact with purple highlights.

They should be a rich green in color and firm. Wrinkles in the stem indicate that they are old.

Try to pick out Asparagus that is roughly the same size and thickness for uniform cooking. Thinner ones are more tender and sweet. Whereas thicker ones are meatier with a stronger asparagus taste.

How to Store Asparagus

Store them in a glass or jar with just about 1/2 inch of water. The water should just cover the woody part of the stem, which will be snapped away when you decide to cook them.

These are vegetables that I usually pick up as I need them.

Prepping Roasted Asparagus

Wash well and pat dry. Hold the bottom end and snap it. It will naturally snap at the correct place so that you don’t include the woody stem. Which isn’t very appetizing.

Set these aside until you have the Garlic, Bacon fat or Oil, Salt & Pepper in a sheet pan or roasting pan. Then add them in and toss.

Roasted Garlic

What you are really after is nicely roasted, crispy bits of garlic. To get better results on this, toss the asparagus around while cooking so that the bits of garlic come into contact with the oil and roast up nicely.

Roughly chop the garlic, about 6 or more cloves. You don’t want the garlic too small, as this will burn and give a bitter taste.

Fat

Use a neutral or extra virgin olive oil, sometimes with a bit of bacon fat included or all bacon fat, which works really well both with roasted Asparagus & Roasted Broccoli.

Melted Butter or Papa Johns Garlic Sauce can be made up and used to drizzle over the Roasted Asparagus after they have cooked to add extra Buttery & Garlicky Flavors.

Papa Johns Garlic Sauce with fine garlic powder — Papa Johns

Seasoning

Nothing more than Kosher Salt or Sea Salt & Black Pepper. Optionally you could add in Red Pepper Flakes or some White Pepper or use the Salt & Pepper Ratio in my Salt & Pepper Chicken which includes white pepper as well.

Salt & Pepper

1 Tbl Sea Salt
1 tsp Black Pepper
1/2 tsp White Pepper

Garnishing

Optionally garnish the Roasted Asparagus with Freshly Shredded Parmesan Cheese & Aleppo Flakes or Chili Flakes. For a more zesty version, squeeze some lemon juice over the Asparagus.

Toasted sesame seeds are also a very nice garnishing.