Roasted Cabbage with Lemon from Kalyn's Kitchen

I'm always on the look out for more interesting ways to dress up standard vegetable side dishes.  While combing the internet for blog worthy recipes this past weekend, this recipe for Roasted Cabbage with Lemon from Kalyn's Kitchen piqued my interest.  Lemon and cabbage is not a combination that I would immediately put together in my mind. I love the braised cabbage from NomNomPaleo, but the 2 hour cook time doesn't lend itself to a weeknight dinner for me.  Could this recipe give me a flavorful side dish in a reasonable amount of time?  Let's see!

After gathering my ingredients, I pre-heated my oven to 450 degrees.       

Simplicity.

I started by cutting my cabbage into wedges.  I wasn't as careful as I should have been and I didn't get the cabbage cut anywhere near halves which effected my ability to get nice wedges.  Oops.  I cut out the hard core of the cabbage from the pieces that had it.  

Next, I whisked the lemon juice and olive oil.  Since she made note that she would use more lemon juice the next time she made the dish, I used a full 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.  

I used a foil lined baking sheet to cook this dish to minimize clean up.  After putting the cabbage on the baking sheet, I used a silicone basting brush to coat all surfaces of the cabbage with the lemon oil.  If you haven't switched from the old hard to impossible to clean wooden basting brushes to a silicone brush, you are missing out.  I then seasoned both sides of the cabbage wedges with salt and pepper.  

Once I finished basting and seasoning, I put the cabbage in the oven and set a timer for 15 minutes.

Here's the cabbage at the 15 minute mark.  I flipped the wedges over using tongs and set the oven timer for another 15 minutes.  

Here's my finished cabbage.  

Accessibility and Cost of Ingredients:  All of the ingredients can be found at your "big box" grocery store pretty inexpensively.  The recipe calls for fresh lemon juice, but I figured bottled juice would do just fine.  I happened to have all of the ingredients required in my pantry/refrigerator.

Preparation & Cooking Time: It took me about 10 minutes to prepare the cabbage to roast.  The cook time was 30 minutes.  

Clean Up:  The clean up for this dish was super easy.  I was able put everything I used into the dishwasher.  The baking sheet wasn't dirty after I removed the foil.  

The Paleo Review:  Thumbs Up!  The lemon gave this recipe a nice zesty kick over the usual roasted cabbage.  This batch was a little salty to me, so next time I'll likely only salt one side of the cabbage.

I suggest eating as much of this as you can stand right out of the oven because it gets a little soggy the next day.  Oddly, the lemon flavor also dissipated the next day.  I might try even more lemon juice next time and see what difference that makes, if any.

I can't say its as good as the braised, but certainly it's a good weekday substitute.

Blog Note:  I am super excited!  I received my first recipe request through the new recipe suggestion widget and it looks like it could potentially be an awesome dish!  My current plan is to cook it this weekend and hopefully get it blogged next week.  Do you have a paleo recipe you've wanted to try but would rather have someone else make it first?  Suggest it!