Roasts and Traybakes - how to make them easier?

[Wizadora2]

I’ve read posts on here saying how posters bung a roast or quick traybake in the oven, that it is a straight forward meal for them but whenever I cook them, they are a faff. What am I doing wrong?
I parboil potatoes and carrots.
I have veg on a separate tray to the chicken or fish.
I feel like it needs a sauce to go with it.
I have started doing broccoli in the air fryer which is fine.
Are people doing rice instead of potatoes?
There are 5 of us, I feel like tray bakes work for smaller numbers?

I will add that I am from a culture which doesn’t have oven based cooking which might explain my confusion.

Thanks!

I wouldn’t parboil anything, and I’d put it all on the same tray, and no separate sauce!!

i do one which is chicken thighs/drum sticks with peppers and onions and courgettes. Bit of oil, herbs and lemon juice. Put in oven for half an hour, then add some cherry tomatoes and do another 15 mins. Cook some cous cous. Serve. The lemon juice, oil and vegetables make a thin sauce in themselves.

another would be sausages and potatoes, plus maybe peppers and onions, could also do broccoli or add kale towards the end. Bit of oil, lovely.

seems like you are over complicating things by making sauce, and using multiple trays and parboiling.

Potatoes will do just fine without parboiling - use fairly youngish small ones and cube them beforehand. I often do potato and zucchini cubed with chicken thighs on top. The thighs give some extra moisture to the potatoes.

Rukmini Iyer’s roasting tin cookbooks are fabulous for this.

The trick is to cut all the veg to a size where it cooks at the same time. So cut your potatoes small but keep courgettes, peppers et chunky. If carrots they need to be larger cut than the potatoes.

And if in doubt cover with tin foil.

Thanks for the tips
I’m going to try some of changes and hopefully it will be less of a faff!