All About: Carrots

How to Cook Tips How to Store Substitution Nutrition

When you think about carrots, you may think of the wascally wabbit's favorite snack: long, thin, and orange. But the crunchy vegetable is hardly reminiscent of its wild ancestor, which was small and red, yellow, purple, white, or black in color. Native to Afghanistan, the vegetable was introduced to the shores of England in the fifteenth century. The following century, Dutch growers began to cross-breed the vegetable with red varieties containing anthocyanin and developed the modern orange color, rich with beta-carotene.

Today's carrots are identified by their leaves as a relative of dill, parsley, fennel, celery, and the wildflower Queen Anne's Lace. Most are seven to nine inches long, and larger ones are peeled, trimmed, and sold as baby carrots. However, true baby carrots are pulled prematurely from the ground and look like miniature carrots. Young carrots generally have a mild, tender flavor, whereas mature carrots are sweet.

How to Cook

Whether they're eaten raw or used as an addition to a cooked dish, carrots need to be scrubbed with a vegetable brush under running water or peeled and rinsed thoroughly. Carrots can be baked, blanched, microwaved, or steamed. For a more robust flavor, use fruit juice or broth as a cooking liquid instead of water when microwaving carrots. Try pureeing cooked carrots and seasoning them with savory or sweet spices.

Back To Top

Tips

Here are some tips for getting the most out of carrots. And with school just around the corner, carrots make a great addition to a packed lunch, whether cooked or served raw with vegetable dip. Carrots also make a great snack because, with the exception of beets, they contain more sugar than any other vegetable. And it's a healthy, natural sugar!

  • Look for well-shaped carrots with a healthy reddish orange color. (The darker the color, the higher the beta-carotene content.) Avoid cracked, shriveled, soft, or wilted carrots.
  • Because it's hard for our bodies to break down the tough cellular wall of the carrot, cooking them just until crisp-tender makes their nutrients more accessible.
  • Add chopped or grated carrots to soups and tomato sauces for sweetness, and to meatloaf to "stretch" the meat and increase moisture.
  • Grated carrots are often added to recipes, including potato pancakes, quick breads, and muffins, to increase moisture and sweetness without increasing fat, sugar, or calories.
  • Combine carrots slices with tomato wedges in a vegetable platter or salad. Lycopene, which makes tomatoes red in color, enhances the body's absorption of beta-carotene.

Back To Top

How to Store

Carrots should be refrigerated in your crisper in their original plastic bag to retain flavor, texture, and nutritional value. Twist or cut off carrot "tops" before storing, as the greens will quickly wilt and decay and pull moisture from the roots, leaving your carrots limp and rubbery.

Back To Top

Substitution

Canned or frozen varieties are available, though they contain less than half the vitamin C and beta-carotene as fresh carrots.

Back To Top

Nutrition

Carrots are the leading source of beta-carotene in the American diet, which is converted by the body to vitamin A. This represents 405 percent of your daily value of vitamin A, and though it won't improve existing vision problems, the nutrient is essential to the function of your retina. According to researchers at the USDA, eating carrots may help to lower your cholesterol level. In their study, participants who ate seven ounces of carrots a day for three weeks had an 11 percent reduction in cholesterol levels, on average. Grated carrots are also a great source of fiber; 1/2 cup of carrots will add about two grams of fiber to a recipe.

Back To Top