Briam: The Greek Oven-Roasted Vegetables in Olive Oil

There is a whole family of Greek dishes called ladera — literally "the oily ones". The name sounds unglamorous in English, but it describes something rather beautiful: dishes in which olive oil is not a cooking medium but the main ingredient. Briam is the best known of them. Vegetables, olive oil, a little tomato, oregano, time. That is the entire recipe.

What makes briam worth your attention is what happens in the oven. Given enough oil and enough patience, courgette and aubergine stop being watery and become silky. Potatoes soak up tomato and oregano. The edges caramelise. Nothing is fried, nothing is browned in a hurry — the oil does the work slowly, and the vegetables taste more like themselves than they did raw.

This is a dish that lives or dies on the olive oil. Use a thin, tired supermarket oil and you get roasted vegetables. Use a proper unfiltered extra virgin oil with some pepper and bite to it, and you get briam.

What Briam Actually Is

Briam is a Greek summer vegetable bake, cooked slowly in the oven with a generous quantity of olive oil. It is served warm or — traditionally — at room temperature, which is when the flavours have settled and the oil has taken on everything around it.

It is often compared to French ratatouille, and the vegetables overlap, but the method is different. Ratatouille is usually built in stages on the hob, each vegetable cooked separately. Briam goes into one dish and into the oven, and is left alone. It is a peasant dish in the best sense: it asks for very little attention and rewards good ingredients.

Almost every Greek family makes it slightly differently. Some include peppers, some do not. Some slice everything into rounds and arrange them in neat overlapping rows; others simply tumble everything in. Both are correct.

Why the Olive Oil Matters More Than Usual

In most recipes olive oil is a supporting player. In briam it is the sauce. As the vegetables release their moisture, that liquid emulsifies with the oil and the tomato into something glossy that pools at the bottom of the dish — the part everyone fights over with a piece of bread.

Our extra virgin olive oil from the Peloponnese is unfiltered and naturally cloudy, hand-harvested and extracted by cold mechanical pressing only. It carries a spicy, buttery, peppery character that survives the oven and shows up in the finished dish. It also withstands heat up to 180°C without forming trans fats, which is exactly the temperature range briam wants.

Do not be timid with the quantity. A common mistake is to treat 150 ml of oil as excessive. In a ladera dish, it is the point.

Choosing Your Vegetables

Briam is a summer dish and it shows. The classic combination is potato, courgette, aubergine, tomato and onion — vegetables that are cheap and abundant in Greece in July and August, and that all happen to cook at roughly compatible speeds when sliced thinly.

A few practical notes:

• Potatoes — a waxy variety holds its shape; a floury one will partly dissolve and thicken the sauce. Both outcomes are pleasant, so use what you have.
• Aubergine — salting it for 20 minutes and patting it dry reduces bitterness and stops it drinking quite so much oil.
• Courgette — smaller ones have fewer seeds and less water.
• Tomato — ripe and soft. Out of season, good tinned tomatoes are honestly better than pale fresh ones.
• Onion — red onion is sweeter and more traditional here than white.

Ingredients

Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a side

• 500 g potatoes, peeled and sliced ½ cm thick
• 2 medium courgettes, sliced ½ cm thick
• 1 medium aubergine, sliced ½ cm thick
• 2 red onions, sliced into thin rings
• 4 ripe tomatoes — 3 sliced, 1 grated or finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 150 ml extra virgin olive oil from the Peloponnese
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• A small handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 100 ml water

Optional, to serve: a handful of black Kalamata olives scattered over the top for the last 10 minutes, and crusty bread for the oil at the bottom.

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (fan 160°C). Salt the aubergine slices, leave them in a colander for 20 minutes, then rinse briefly and pat thoroughly dry.
2. Put the potatoes, courgettes, aubergine, onions and sliced tomatoes into a large bowl. Add the garlic, oregano, half the parsley, a generous pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper.
3. Pour in the olive oil and the grated tomato. Now use your hands — properly mix everything so that every slice is coated. This is the step people rush, and it is the one that matters.
4. Tip the whole lot into a large roasting dish and spread it out. It should be no more than about 4 cm deep, or the middle will steam rather than roast. Use two dishes if needed.
5. Pour the water down the side of the dish — not over the top, which would wash the oil off the vegetables.
6. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
7. Remove the foil, gently turn the vegetables once, and return to the oven for a further 45–60 minutes. The briam is ready when the potatoes give no resistance to a knife and the top layer has taken on golden, slightly blackened edges.
8. Take it out and leave it to stand for at least 20 minutes. Briam served straight from the oven is a different, lesser dish — the resting is not optional.
9. Scatter with the remaining parsley and a final drizzle of raw olive oil just before serving.

How to Serve It

In Greece briam is often a main course in its own right, eaten with bread and a slab of feta. It is also an excellent side for grilled fish or lamb. Because it is served at room temperature, it is one of the few dishes that is genuinely better made in the morning and eaten in the evening — or made today and eaten tomorrow.

Leftovers keep in the fridge for three days. Bring them back to room temperature before eating; straight from the fridge, the olive oil is stiff and the flavours are muted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 150 ml of olive oil really necessary?

Yes, if you want briam rather than roasted vegetables. Ladera dishes are defined by the quantity of oil — it becomes the sauce as the vegetables release their moisture. You can reduce it to 100 ml and the dish will still be good, but it will be drier and the bottom of the dish will not give you that glossy pool to mop up with bread.

Can I make briam in winter with different vegetables?

Certainly. The method matters more than the specific vegetables. Winter versions with pumpkin, carrot, celeriac and leek work well — just keep the slices thin and even so everything finishes at the same time. Root vegetables may need an extra 15 minutes under the foil.

Why is my briam watery instead of glossy?

Usually one of three reasons: the dish was too deep, so the vegetables steamed; the foil stayed on for the whole cooking time, trapping moisture; or too much water was added at the start. The second half of the cooking should be uncovered, so the excess liquid evaporates and what remains emulsifies with the oil.

Pour La Vie

Briam is a reminder that Mediterranean cooking is rarely about technique. It is about a handful of things grown well, treated simply, and given time. A vegetable, an oil, an oven, an afternoon.

That is the way we think about everything we source: nothing added, nothing rushed, and a story you can trace back to the grove it came from. Taste the oil that makes the dish — Pour La Vie.