Roasted Carrots

Sometimes, the most basic of things is the best.

Quite a while ago (definitely weeks, and maybe months), I bought a very large bag of carrots. I don’t dislike carrots, but I don’t really like them either. Even though I gave up peeling them years ago, I still find them a lot of work. I usually scrub, since I don’t peel. They’re so hard, you really have to chew them. They’re annoying in salads (they fall to the bottom, they’re tough to chew, etc.) unless you shred them, and that’s a lot of work. But Dan likes carrots a lot. However, I was overly optimistic about Dan’s ability to go through this huge bag, and four large carrots sat in our drawer for a very long time.

They were still there when my mother, before her arrival from Mexico, asked me to have carrots on hand for her during her visit. I didn’t want to offer her weeks- (or months?-) old carrots, so I wanted to buy new ones for her, but I also didn’t want to throw away food that might still be edible. So I did what I often do with vegetables I don’t otherwise know what to do with or particularly like: I roasted them.

Wow.

I Googled roasted carrots just to get a sense of cooking times and temperature (someday I will trust my gut on these things, but not yet) and found this recipe from Delish. Chopping was chopping. No getting around that part. But super quick toss with olive oil, spread on a pan, bake, and voila. I didn’t stir them partway through or anything.

They were delicious! Have I never had roasted carrots before? Is there something magical about Delish’s time/temperature combination? I ate half with some tahini thinking I would save the other half for later, or for my son, but nope. Ate them too. Yes, that’s four carrots, all eaten very quickly.

That was a couple weeks ago now. I just made a second batch – not because I had carrots laying around, but because I was craving them. I cut them in coins instead of diagonal across as the recipe recommends (and as I did the first time), and I left them in the oven after baking for a while because I was busy with other things, and I admit they are a little overdone. Still tasty, though. This is probably a new every-time-of-year favorite, but definitely a new Fall favorite. 🎃 🥕 🍁