There’s something about the lowly carrot. The combination of juicy sweetness and crunchy spiciness in a raw carrot made it a perfect snack when I was a kid. I was in college before I discovered a version of cooked carrots that I liked: caramelized carrots.
Carrots don’t have enough substance to carry the weight of a main course, nor do they often make an appearance as finger foods. In restaurants, carrots rarely make an appearance outside of a bland addition to the mixed vegetables that sometimes arrive at the side of an entrée. Despite this, they do one thing very well: caramelized carrots are magnificent as a side dish.
Caramelized carrots are simple. Obviously, carrots are required. The other requirement is some type of sugar. White sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup or even molasses can provide the syrup that carrots are caramelized in. For a more complex flavor, spices like cardamom or cinnamon can be added.
The carrots I bought from the farmers’ market were small organic carrots with thin skins. All I had to do was scrub them until I caught every speck of dirt in the creases on the skin. With the typical bag of carrots bought at the grocery store, I would recommend peeling them. Then, when slicing them to bite-size, I like to chop the carrots at a steep angle so the resulting slices are rather oval-shaped.
A variety of colors like the carrots I used typically indicates that the composition of the nutrients present also varies. This is considered a good thing nutritionally speaking, but what I was excited about was the multi-colored dish I was about to cook. What I found out, once I started cooking them, was that it wasn’t going to be a dish with orange, white and purple. All of the carrots were cooking to various shades of orange.
As disappointed as I was with the colors, the flavor was everything I could ask for. It was carrot-y, it was sweet and multi-layered. I enjoyed it with my vegetarian scalloped potatoes, bread and pie.
The other guests were surprised with how well it went with the main dish of ham.
Carrots are often overlooked or ignored. Their flavor isn’t an obvious choice as a starting point for a meal. I think this is a result of being fed overcooked, salty and unappealing carrots as a kid. It limits the idea of what a carrot can be, and what a carrot can be is a spicy and sweet addition that makes an ordinary meal memorable.
Glazed & Spiced Carrots
1/3 cup maple syrup or brown sugar
Dash of salt
2 tbsp. butter
1 pound of fresh carrots, sliced to bite-size
A spice of your choice: ground cardamom, cinnamon, cumin or coriander
Begin by heating the butter, salt, maple syrup and cardamom in a skillet, stirring until bubbly. Add carrots and cook on low heat, stirring occasionally until carrots are tender.
