Charred Asparagus with Romesco

This delicious Grilled Asparagus with Romesco Sauce is the type of side dish you expect to enjoy at a fancy, high-end steak house. The beautifully charred Asparagus sits on top a silky-smooth Romesco Sauce that is loaded with brilliant flavors of Tomatoes and roast Bell Peppers. It’s got a punchy flavor, but still light and easy to enjoy, making it the perfect side to a hearty Steak. You can also enjoy this beautiful dish as it’s own meal. Just ramp up the proportions and you will have a delicious vegetarian dinner to enjoy!

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The key to this beautiful dish is making a beautiful Romesco Sauce

This dish is elevated by making an amazing Romesco Sauce, which for its depth of flavor is remarkably simple to make at home. To make a Romesco Sauce, you need to oven roast a Red Bell Pepper until it is slightly charred. Remove the skin and seeds once it’s cooled and preserve that beautiful flesh

It will have a slightly smoky flavor, which will come through as one of the prominent flavors in the sauce. Along with Bell Pepper we like to roast up an Onion too. Roast Onion is one of our favorites, and adds a lovely sweetness to the sauce

This beautiful Romesco Sauce is the perfect pairing for Charred Asparagus

Along with the Vegetables, the Romesco Sauce is completed by adding Tomatoes and Roast Almonds. That’s right, Almonds go into the sauce! It may seem weird, but this is the traditional method for creating this sauce. The Almonds add an (obvious) nutty flavor to the sauce, but also help to give it some body

For the Tomatoes, you can either use fresh or canned Tomatoes. We prefer Canned, because they’re going to be good all year around, and have a slightly sweeter overall flavor. So, just throw them into the blender along with everything else and give it a good blitz for a few minutes until smooth

There is no need to pass the sauce through a sieve, it will be surprisingly smooth already. You can prepare the sauce in advance and simply re-heat it when you’re ready to make the Charred Asparagus with Romesco Dish

What makes this dish unique is the beautiful, charred Asparagus

Let’s face it, Asparagus is kinda boring. It’s usually served as a side dish to some protein. Either way, it’s generally very simply prepared and just kind of ‘there’ to get your vegetables in. Well not in this dish!

Asparagus can be a wonderfully flavored Vegetable when cooked correctly and become the star of the show. In this dish we prepare the Asparagus by scorching it on the open flame to get a beautiful blackened, charred flavor to it

Charred Asparagus with Romesco Side Dish — Our Charred Asparagus with Romesco adds some fun and tasty flavors to a classic Vegetable Side Dish

The process is super-simple but does require having a gas stovetop at home. To char the Asparagus, it first needs to be lightly steamed or blanched, so the inside is just cooked. We prefer the steamed approach, which you can do by simply adding a bit of water to a frying pan. Add the Asparagus, cover it, then cook over a medium heat for a few minutes

The Water turns to steam and cooks the Asparagus. You want to keep it nice and crispy, so 2 – 3 minutes max is all you need. Then remove the Asparagus from the pan and scorch it directly over the flame on your stovetop. Be sure to use tongs to avoid getting that fire anywhere near your hands!

You want sections of the Asparagus to char to a point that they’re almost black. Don’t do this all over the Asparagus spear, just get a few little bits of blackened char. This adds a wonderful flavor to the Asparagus, but will still maintain that light, freshness that you expect out of the vegetable

Charred Asparagus options — You can still achieve a beautiful Charred Asparagus without a gas stovetop. You can use an outdoor grill or even an electric stovetop and achieve a great result

How to char the Asparagus if you don’t have a gas stovetop

The good news is it is still possible to get a nice char on the Asparagus! There are a few methods to do so. The easiest is to cook it on an outdoor grill. So, if you’ve got one and it’s not freezing cold outside, this is a preferred method

If you don’t have a grill then you technically can still get a char on the Asparagus using an electric stovetop. Follow the same method of getting the Asparagus some direct exposure to the element. It’ll still work! I would recommend giving the stovetop a good clean before and afterwards, however

Asparagus and Romesco on plate — You can have some fun getting creative with how you plate this dish. Try for about 3 pieces of Asparagus per plate so you can serve 4 people with this recipe

Plating the Charred Asparagus with Romesco

You can have some fun with plating, as there’s loads of ways you can make the plate look beautiful. For us, we went with the classic plating approach of adding a few generous spoonful’s of Romesco to a plate, then placing the Asparagus on top

For this recipe you’ll produce a generous yield of Romesco Sauce. Probably enough for 6 – 8 plates or so. I like to keep the plating to about 3 Asparagus each, especially if you can get the big ones. Just make sure you’re plating an appropriate amount of Asparagus for the meal. We added 3 as it’s an appetizer, but you’re free to add more, especially if you’re planning on enjoying this dish as a stand-alone dinner

Once you’ve finished plating we recommend adding a squeeze of Lemon Juice, a drizzle of Olive Oil, and finishing the whole thing off with some Flaky Salt. These finishing touches add some nice additional flavors, textures, and visuals to the dish. However you decide to plate this dish, we just know you’re going to love it!

Recipe Details

Servings

4 people

Prep time

10 minutes

Cooking time

50 minutes

Total time

1 hour