Flavorful honey roasted parsnips, carrots and beetroot combine beautifully with crispy bites of halloumi cheese in this easy but hearty recipe. This can be a simple tray bake dinner, served with a drizzle of cooling garlic yogurt, or a side dish as part of a larger meal. Feel free to mix up the veggies to suit your tastes and what you’ve got in the fridge.
This recipe started out as a fridge clearing exercise after Christmas, when little scraps of parsnip and carrot continued to linger in the veggie drawers for a couple of weeks. I always have a block or two of halloumi in the fridge, and the combination of halloumi and veggie scraps always leads to the same place for me… a tray bake aka sheet pan dinner!
We’ve already done more than a few halloumi tray bakes around here (my most popular being this one with pesto rice) but with this recipe, we are really focusing in on the winter flavors and root veggies. I use carrots, parsnips and beets / beetroot, which all cook in similar time frames and taste amazing glazed with honey. You can mix things up a little if you wish, but I consider these three to be the dream team.
This will take over an hour to get on the table, between the chopping and the roasting time, but it’s a very easygoing one pan meal that gives you plenty of downtime while it’s in the oven (and you can prep the veggies ahead of time if you want to simplify your evening even more!)
Ingredient & Recipe Tips
- The recipe calls for 1 pound (450g) of peeled, chopped root vegetables. For me today, that was one large carrot, one large parsnip and a couple of red beets but the ratios can be adjusted depending on what you have. More important than the actual amount is how they fit in your pan – you want the veggies to fill a baking tray, in a single layer, without leaving too much empty space. The veggies will shrink as they cook, making room for the halloumi to be added later on. Some baking trays have a little more flat surface area than others, so you may find you can’t fit quite as much in, or you may find you can add a little more.
- Alternative veggies that you could include here might be white potatoes, golden beets / beetroot, turnips, swede / rutabaga, or sweet potatoes. If you use sweet potatoes, I would recommend you cut them a little bigger than the other veggies – their cook time is a little quicker so this will help to even things out.
- We add some wedges of red onion to the pan which melt down and caramelize in the most delicious way. If you don’t have quite enough veggies to fill the pan, you can certainly add extra onion.
- The veggies are roasted in olive oil and honey, so they caramelize in a sweet, slightly sticky glaze. If you’d prefer to use less honey, you certainly can. One tablespoon will still work well.
- I highly recommend the easy garlic yogurt sauce recipe included in the recipe, which is super quick to whisk together while the veggies are in the oven. Tahini based sauces are also great with this kind of recipe, so if you’d rather go down that route check out the tahini drizzle in this eggplant halloumi recipe.
Serving Suggestions
I personally find this to be a satisfying meal all on it’s own, but it will only serve 2-3 that way. If you want more variety, or if you need to stretch it to serve more people, some great pairings would be:
- A pack of pita bread or wraps for scooping the veggies and halloumi into.
- A bowl of plain rice – easy! Or if you have the time go could go a little further, you could make some mushroom rice or Feta & Kale Rice.
- A bowl of tabbouleh or a grain salad.
More Roasted Veggie Recipes with Halloumi
Roasted Root Vegetables with Halloumi
Ingredients
- 8 oz (225 g) halloumi , cubed
- 1 lb (450 g) Mixed root vegetables – carrots, parsnips, beetroot, etc, chopped into small bite sized pieces
- ½ large red onion, cut into wedges
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp honey
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 2 tbsp sage, rosemary or other winter herbs, chopped
For the garlic yogurt sauce
- 1 cup (240 ml) greek yogurt
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, keep the rest of the lemon to slice into wedges for serving
- 1 small clove garlic, crushed – I like to run it through a garlic crusher twice to get it as smooth as possible
- salt, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the honey and olive oil. Add the root veggies and toss to coat in the mixture. Add lots of salt and pepper to taste.1 lb Mixed root vegetables – carrots, parsnips, beetroot, etc, 4 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp honey, salt and pepper
- Scatter on a baking tray, and place the onion wedges in the tray. Use a spatula to scrape the last of the honey-oil mixture to drizzle over the onions.1/2 large red onion
- Place in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the veggies are browned around the edges and have shrunk down, but aren't fully caramelized yet.
- Add the herbs, then use a spatula to flip move the veggies around the pan. Place the halloumi in the pan, brush with a little oil on the tops, and then place back in the oven for another 10 minutes.2 tbsp sage, rosemary or other winter herbs, 8 oz halloumi
- Prepare the garlic yogurt by whisking all of the ingredients together.1 cup greek yogurt, 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1 small clove garlic, salt
- Check in on the veggies and halloumi after 10 minutes is up. We want the veggies should be well browned and the halloumi to be browned and crisping up around the edges, with a few lightly browned spots on the tops too. It may need another 5 minutes to get there, and you can rotate the pan in the oven if you find that it isn't cooking evenly.
- Serve with the yogurt and some lemon wedges for squeezing if you wish.
Really tasty, thank you!
I’m so glad you liked it! One of my recent faves 😃