The conundrum with carrots

Carrots seem so simple but I’m having a hard time cooking them. They come out mushy and limp. They taste bad. They look bad. It’s all bad.

I’ve learned a few things in my effort to cook this most simple side dish.

First, you do in fact need to peel your carrots, because it’s the skin that gives carrots a bitter flavor. Don’t worry about losing nutrients, there are plenty of them and they pervade the entire carrot. 

And as an important aside, carrots are among the vegetables that are more nutritious when cooked than when raw. When you heat them up, you do kill some of the delicate vitamin C; but mainly what we hope to get from carrots is beta carotene. 

I learned from the online carrot museum (I am not kidding, it’s at www.carrotmuseum.co.uk) that “The antioxidant value of carrots increases by about 34 percent when cooked.”

The reason why: “Raw carrots have tough cellular walls” that impede the body’s ability to convert and absorb the beta carotene. 

“Cooking partially dissolves the cellulose-thickened cell walls, freeing up the nutrients,” according to the museum website, which also recommends that the carrots be cooked with some kind of fat (that would include olive oil) because the fat also helps the body absorb the  nutrients.

Vegetable juice isn’t so much my thing, but the website says that juicing also makes those nutrients very available to your body.

Now we’ve resolved that carrots are nutritious and that they need to be peeled and cooked. Next question: How should they be cooked so that they look and taste wonderful?

First of course, your cooked carrots are only as good as your raw carrots. I found a lot of really limp, tired carrots as I was working on this story. I am making a special point of saying that because the holidays are coming up and it’s likely that a) you’re cooking for a large crowd and b) you don’t have any more carrots from your garden.

So, if you’re just cooking a few carrots, I think you’re probably going to be fine traveling to a store with a good produce department and spending a little extra money to get a beautiful bundle of carrots. Chop off the greens but leave an inch or two of stem at the top (because it’s prettier). 

My friend Anne Young of the www.annefood.com blog (who is also quoted in this week’s article on cooking turkey) suggested that for a small amount of carrots, it’s nice to roast them. 

Make sure you pat them dry after you peel them and before you put them in the oven, so you are truly roasting them and not steaming them. Put them in a heavy cooking vessel such as a large cast iron pan. Make sure there is some space between each carrot (again, so they don’t steam). 

Put a little olive oil and maybe a pat of butter on them. Cook them between 375 and 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, so that the interior cooks through but the exterior doesn’t overcook. If you want to add honey, add it toward the end of the cooking time. 

Anne and I also did an experiment with cooking sliced carrots on the stovetop. They came out really nicely. Confession: I didn’t feel like peeling a lot of carrots, so I bought baby carrots. Baby carrots are not in fact baby carrots; they are big carrots that have been cut and shaped into 2-inch logs. 

Yes, they do clean them at the factory in a solution that includes a small amount of chlorine but that isn’t going to cause cancer (I say this with confidence because I’m a swimmer and have ingested a lot of chlorine in my life). And the carrots are sold in a plastic bag with a little water to keep them hydrated, so yes do rinse the carrots before you cook them.

If you want them to look a little nicer, cut each carrot on the bias (lengthwise and diagonally).  Cook them in a little olive oil and a little water or broth, stirring them so they get nicely browned on all sides and nicely tender on the inside.

To make them really pretty, sprinkle some parsley on top before you serve. 

Latest News

Club baseball at Fuessenich Park

Travel league baseball came to Torrington Thursday, June 26, when the Berkshire Bears Select Team played the Connecticut Moose 18U squad. The Moose won 6-4 in a back-and-forth game. Two players on the Bears play varsity ball at Housatonic Valley Regional High School: shortstop Anthony Foley and first baseman Wes Allyn. Foley went 1-for-3 at bat with an RBI in the game at Fuessenich Park.

 

  Anthony Foley, rising senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, went 1-for-3 at bat for the Bears June 26.Photo by Riley Klein 

 
Siglio Press: Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature

Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.

Richard Kraft

Siglio Press is a small, independent publishing house based in Egremont, Massachusetts, known for producing “uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.” Founded and run by editor and publisher Lisa Pearson, Siglio has, since 2008, designed books that challenge conventions of both form and content.

A visit to Pearson’s airy studio suggests uncommon work, to be sure. Each of four very large tables were covered with what looked to be thousands of miniature squares of inkjet-printed, kaleidoscopically colored pieces of paper. Another table was covered with dozens of book/illustration-size, abstracted images of deer, made up of colored dots. For the enchanted and the mystified, Pearson kindly explained that these pieces were to be collaged together as artworks by the artist Richard Kraft (a frequent contributor to the Siglio Press and Pearson’s husband). The works would be accompanied by writings by two poets, Elizabeth Zuba and Monica Torre, in an as-yet-to-be-named book, inspired by a found copy of a worn French children’s book from the 1930s called “Robin de Bois” (Robin Hood).

Keep ReadingShow less
Cycling season: A roundup of our region’s rentals and where to ride them

Cyclists head south on the rail trail from Copake Falls.

Alec Linden

After a shaky start, summer has well and truly descended upon the Litchfield, Berkshire and Taconic hills, and there is no better way to get out and enjoy long-awaited good weather than on two wheels. Below, find a brief guide for those who feel the pull of the rail trail, but have yet to purchase their own ten-speed. Temporary rides are available in the tri-corner region, and their purveyors are eager to get residents of all ages, abilities and inclinations out into the open road (or bike path).

For those lucky enough to already possess their own bike, perhaps the routes described will inspire a new way to spend a Sunday afternoon. For more, visit lakevillejournal.com/tag/bike-route to check out two ride-guides from local cyclists that will appeal to enthusiasts of many levels looking for a varied trip through the region’s stunning summer scenery.

Keep ReadingShow less