The (Science-y) Secret to Super Sweet Carrots (2024)

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The (Science-y) Secret to Super Sweet Carrots? ›

In his newest cookbook, Milk Street: The New Home Cooking, the former America's Test Kitchen host explains that shredding root vegetables like carrots, turnips, or yams makes them taste both sweeter and fresher. The more cells you rupture, the better the taste.

The natural sweetness of carrots is amplified with a tasty brown sugar, orange zest and butter glaze, adding a bright burst of color and flavor to the dinner table.

Honey, butter, and brown sugar make these sweet baby carrots irresistible! It may not be the most nutritious recipe, but the carrots turn out so yummy, you won't care!

Furthermore, she says, "chemically, there are more sugars in a raw carrot than in a boiled carrot", which will have leaked sweetness into the cooking. As well as their inherent sweetness, she continues, "carrots can have a harsh, sometimes earthy or woody flavour character.

Roasting really brings out carrots' best qualities. To make them, just toss carrots with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Gardeners also use Epsom salts to improve the growth of roses, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and grapefruits. Epsom salts have neutral pH levels which means it will not affect your garden soil's pH.

Carrots. Carrots like fertile soil with a neutral pH, loose and breathable, which coffee grounds can provide. Also, carrots prefer decomposed fertilizers, so use ready-made compost with coffee grounds or humus to fertilize them.

Picking too early may mean bitter, soapy-tasting roots.

Pick too early and you'll be eating the terpenoids, without the sugars.

However, one reason that vegetables always taste better at a restaurant is that chefs there don't hold back on using oil to boost flavor. They often use oodles of butter, oil, or bacon fat to coat veggies fried on the stove and give them an umami appeal.

What makes carrots taste better? ›

Or, to bring out their fresh, woody flavor, add some anise. If you're roasting your carrots, toss them in olive oil first. This will help keep the moisture in them. To bring out the sweetness in your carrots, season them with orange or lemon juice or a little brown sugar and butter.

Roasting intensifies the flavour by removing water. Try not to brown them too much though, which will give them a burnt-sugar taste. Use complimentary spices. Mace, which is the dried membrane that surrounds nutmeg, compliments and enhances the flavour of carrots very well.

“When the vegetable is cut, its cells rupture and release sugars and volatile hydrocarbons, the sources of the vegetables' sweetness and aroma,” he writes. "The more cells you rupture, the better the taste.”

This is due, in part, to their ability to convert starch into sugar. Over the course of the growing season, these vegetables store up energy in the form of starches. When temperatures start to drop, they convert these starches into sugars, which act as an anti-freezing agent for their cells.

Select carrot varieties known for their sweet flavor. Dantes, Little finger, Short 'n Sweet, Sweetness, and Tendersweet are just a few to consider. Be sure to plant carrots early in the season for an early summer harvest, midseason for a fall harvest or fall for a winter harvest in milder climates.

If this carrot soup is a bit too sweet for your taste, you can balance out that sweetness with 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to boost and brighten the flavor.