Oven Roasted Carrots Recipe

Name: Oven Roasted Carrots Recipe
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 40 min
Ingredients: 2 lb Carrots; 1 tablespoon Salt; 2 tablespoons Oil; 2 lb Carrots; 4 tablespoons Butter (melted); 3 cloves Garlic (finely cut or crushed); 3 tablespoon Parsley (finely cut); 1 tablespoon Salt

Seeking to improve eyesight or just after a healthy and tasty dish? Roasting carrots will serve for both or will it really?

Vegetables are curious things at our table. We know that we should be eating them but somehow those green bits are always stuck in the fridge.

Why to love carrots?

For those who learnt to like vegetables past their innocent junk filled childhood, it can be a constant source of surprise discovering again and again the exciting flavors that the same old vegetables can provide.

It seems that liking vegetables or any food in fact is sort of set-in stone, or rather in milk. The diet of our nursing mother is directly affecting the flavor and smell of the milk she provides preparing our taste buds for future endeavors.

When our parents initially thought of winging this baby thing but -couldn’t handle the social pressure of their offspring refusing vegetables- end up scouring parenting books or baby blogs for tips of feeding veggies for kids, it’s already too late.

How can we love carrots?

Luckily, there is still that thing called acquired taste. We are able to learn to like things when exposed to it long enough given there is some kind of social reward received for doing it, as it is the case with hot peppers.

Hiding pureed veggies in pizza crust or Bolognese sauce is not the right solution but playing airplanes with broccoli bits is. Having some fun, while eating something not that fun, can wire us to like that food, all the same.

Playing airplanes with food can be as much fun as playing food with airplanes.

Are carrots a lie?

Many of us have heard about carrots ability to beef up our sight and help us see in the dark better. Although it’s true that if we don’t consume enough vitamin A -that is abundant in carrot- then our sight deteriorates, but unfortunately our sight will not be better than normal by eating more of it.

It turned out that the British Royal Airforce knew all about this little detail during WWII, but they still went ahead of crediting carrots night vision enhancing abilities, for their warplane pilots’ success rates, during nighttime dogfights.

If they had simply told, they shot down more planes because their radar technology is better or that they use red light in the cockpit, so it doesn’t interfere the human’s night vision ability, no one would have bothered to till the soil for carrots. Not to mention that they wouldn’t have had 100.000 tons of carrots at the end of World War 2 that they had no idea what to do with.

The strategy worked so well that even today people still believe and teach their kids to eat their carrots so they can see better in the dark, or do they really?

What are carrots?

Anyway, nowadays carrots are mainly cultivated for its sweet root but it’s a fairly modern property carrots to have thanks to selective breeding. In the old times, the less sweet, whiter and woodier root was as popular as its close relatives the parsley, cilantro, coriander, fennel, anise, dill, and cumin.

They were frequently confused for being parsnips, and even today the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization combine its production data with turnips, despite carrots have the ability to be purple, black, red, white, and yellow.

Interesting fact that while most vegetables are best for us raw, carrots are better when cooked. Or at least this is the case if we are after the β-carotene that is metabolized into vitamin A and not low GI numbers. Simply chewing on raw carrots releases only 3% of the available β-carotene while pulping, cooking with cooking oil can push this to 40%.

Why roast carrots?

If the numbers wouldn’t be enough to convince our feelings, the best news is that roasted carrots actually taste good with very little effort. Of course, we can go the extra mile and spice things up a bit but just throwing a couple of carrots into the oven with some oil and salt on top will do just fine, anytime.

Ingredients

Beginner

2 lb / 900g Carrots
1 tablespoon Salt
2 tablespoons / 30ml Oil

Advanced

2 lb / 900g Carrots
4 tablespoons / 50g Butter (melted)
3 cloves Garlic (finely cut or crushed)
3 tablespoons Parsley (finely cut)
1 tablespoon Salt

How to make Oven roasted carrots

Beginner

Peel the carrots.
Brush them with oil and sprinkle salt on them.
Place the carrots into a 400°F / 200°C oven for 30 – 60 minutes or until the desired texture is reached.

Enjoy!

Advanced

Peel and slice the carrots into chunks and melt butter.
Mix the chopped up garlic, parsley, salt and melted butter with the carrots.
Pour them onto a baking sheet and organize them so they won’t overlap.
Place them into a 400°F / 200°C oven for 30 – 60 minutes or until the desired texture is reached.

Enjoy!

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