Broiling frozen broccoli

[Beusho]

I love broiling broccoli, a little oil and sugar and it browns nicely. It occurred to me after finding a little older soft brown broccoli if this is feasible with frozen broccoli. They have birds eye precut florets around me. I bought a pack and plan to sometime this week but looking for advice here before I try, I was going to try it straight frozen and if that didn't work maybe steam it halfway first. Any tips/tricks anyone recommends or is this a fools errand? What about carrots?

Let me know if you've tried this before

Edited yesterday at 12:10 AM by Beusho (log)

[Maison Rustique]

Most frozen broccoli I have bought has way too much water in it to successfully broil/roast. I think you would end up with slightly browned mush.

[weinoo]

15 hours ago, Maison Rustique said:

Most frozen broccoli I have bought has way too much water in it to successfully broil/roast. I think you would end up with slightly browned mush.

 

I agree - this was the first thing I thought about.

[chromedome]

I think it really comes down to the end result you're looking for. If you broil fresh broccoli, you're probably looking for it to be lightly charred but still tender-crisp. You're not going to get that with frozen.

 

I've cooked frozen broccoli in my oven fairly frequently, because we do love our roasted veg. In my case I'll usually do them at 400 or 425 (conventional), or a bit lower with convection. I'd thought perhaps convection might be better at dispelling the steam from the broccoli, but honestly I don't see much difference one way or another. In our case I always cook the broccoli until very tender, regardless of cooking method, because my poor sweetheart has had all of her molars pulled over the past few years because of recurrent problems, and still gets sporadic infections in her jaw. So no tender-crisp in our meals, because chewing is hard at best and painful at worst for her.

 

If you can live with that, frozen broccoli works fine. I *have* found that some brands do better than others (presumably because of how they're processed?), but you'll have different brands where you live so there's nothing to be gleaned from my experience.