If You Want To Spruce Up Carrots, Add Some Honey

For those of us who are inherently drawn to sweeter foods, consuming enough vegetables can often be a challenging feat. However, we can always reach for those vegetables that provide our taste buds with a delicate sweetness — those with a naturally higher sugar concentration, such as sweet corn, beets, and green peas. While it's true that carrots are sweeter in the winter season, in general, they are one of many vegetables considered to house more sugar than most green varieties. Carrots provide your body with roughly 3.4 grams of sugar per cup.

Even though carrots consumed straight from the fridge should have enough sugar to keep your cravings at bay, sometimes eating them raw doesn't sound like the ideal accompaniment to pan-roasted chicken or grilled New York strip steak. To get the combination of flavors just right, you may need to cook your next batch of carrots. And what better way to spruce up these hearty root vegetables than by pairing them with an ideal spice or sweetener? 

Out of all the options available, carrots tend to pair well with the distinct bite of ginger or mint and the subtlety of maple syrup. But if you want to develop carrots' sugary properties in the cooking process, you might also want to try roasting them with honey.

While you may already have a decent stock of honey stored in your pantry for your favorite honey lavender ice cream recipe, you'll also want to pull out this natural sweetener when you're ready to serve an award-winning plate of carrots. When you're preparing these root vegetables for a weeknight dinner, you might revert to boiling or steaming them as the preferred cooking method of choice. But if you want to amplify carrots' inner sweetness, roasting them is the way to go. To go even further and jumpstart the caramelization process, there's no ingredient better for the job than honey.

There's no denying the fact that roasting carrots has the ability to amplify their nuanced flavor. But when you want an extra-special dish, adding honey and citrus will amplify carrots' inner sweetness. To create perfectly caramelized carrots, Produce Made Simple uses a cast-iron pan to roast carrots in butter and olive oil, then finishes the tender roots with lemon and honey. The carrots become caramelized through roasting, and a light glaze is added to create a deeper complexity of flavors, not to mention a silky glaze. 

However, if honey isn't your thing, you can also use many other delicious ingredients that pair perfectly with cooked carrots.

There's always room for citrus and honey-glazed carrot recipes. But sometimes, your taste buds desire something a little different. Now that you know roasting or browning carrots almost always amplify their hidden sugars, you might want to try a blend of herbs and spices to counterbalance that subtle sweetness. 

Some spices that pair well with carrots are nutmeg, smoked paprika, coriander, and cumin. If you already have a favorite spice mix, you can try adding different textures to your cooked carrots to create a true complexity of different flavors and textures. Cook's Country stands behind the brilliance of browning carrots, topping them with a distinct topping made of citrus zest, hazelnuts, and goat cheese. If hazelnuts aren't your thing, you can make roasted rainbow carrots, which feature a unique blend of tarragon, dried apricots, and almonds.

While spices can be great additions to cooked carrots, nothing matches the simplicity of adding the right amount of cooking oil or butter, salt, and a hint of sweetener. If you want to try something other than honey, maple syrup, molasses, and brown sugar also work well on these roasted root veggies. The next time carrots are on your weekly dinner rotation, give these simple ingredients a try and see how they elevate the side dish.