Ingredient: Carrots
Category: Vegetables
Season: All
The carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white, or red-white blend in colour, with a crisp texture when fresh.
The edible part of a carrot is a taproot.
It is a domesticated form of the wild carrot Daucus carota, native to Europe and southwestern Asia.
It has been bred for its greatly enlarged and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot, but is still the same species.
Uses
Carrots can be eaten in a variety of ways. They are often chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as baby and pet foods.
A well known dish is carrots julienne.
Grated carrots are used in carrot cakes, as well as carrot puddings, an old English dish thought to have originated in the early 1800s.
The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten by humans.
With potatoes, swede, onions and celery, carrots are one of the primary vegetables used in soup packs (mirepoix,french) to make various broths.
Since the late 1980s, baby carrots or mini-carrots (carrots that have been peeled and cut into uniform cylinders) have been a popular ready-to-eat snack food available in many supermarkets.
Carrot juice is also widely marketed, especially as a health drink, either stand-alone or blended with fruits and other vegetables.
The carrot gets its characteristic bright orange colour from carotene, which is metabolised into vitamin A in humans when bile salts are present in the intestines.
Carrots are rich in dietary fibre, antioxidants, and minerals.
Cultivars
Carrot cultivars can be grouped into two broad classes, Eastern carrots and Western carrots.
More recently, a number of novelty cultivars have been bred for particular characteristics.
Eastern carrots
Eastern carrots were domesticated in Central Asia, probably in modern-day Afghanistan in the 10th century, or possibly earlier.
Specimens of the eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow, and often have branched roots
The purple colour common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments.
Western carrots
Carrots with multiple taproots (forks) are not specific cultivars but are a byproduct of damage to earlier forks often associated with rocky soil.
The western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 15th or 16th century, its orange colour making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence.
The orange colour results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars.
While orange carrots are the norm in the West, other colours do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple.
These other colours of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops.
Western carrot cultivars are commonly classified by their root shape:
Chantenay carrots are shorter than other cultivars, but have greater girth, sometimes growing up to 8 centimetres (3 in) in diameter. They have broad shoulders and taper towards a blunt, rounded tip. They are most commonly diced for use in canned or prepared foods.
Danvers carrots have a conical shape, having well-defined shoulders and tapering to a point at the tip. They are somewhat shorter than Imperator cultivars, but more tolerant of heavy soil. Danvers cultivars are often pureed as baby food.
Imperator carrots are the carrots most commonly sold whole in U.S. supermarkets; their roots are longer than other cultivars of carrot, and taper to a point at the tip.
Nantes carrots are nearly cylindrical in shape, and are blunt and rounded at both the top and tip. Nantes cultivars are often sweeter than other carrots.
Carrots can be harvested before reaching full size and sold as a more tender "baby carrot", and some fast-maturing cultivars have been bred to produce smaller roots.
The most extreme examples produce round roots about 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter. These small cultivars are also more tolerant of heavy or stony soil than long-rooted cultivars such as 'Nantes' or 'Imperator'.
The "baby carrots" sold ready-to-eat in supermarkets are often not from a smaller cultivar of carrot, but are simply full-sized carrots that have been sliced and peeled to make carrot sticks of a uniform shape and size.
Novelty carrots
Carrots can be selectively bred to produce different colours.
Food enthusiasts and researchers have developed other varieties of carrots through traditional breeding methods.
Novelty carrots are also grown throughout Western Europe in flower pots and are noted for their distinctly minty flavour.
To cook summer carrots:
There’s absolutely no need to peel them, just rinse them under a cold-running tap and cut off the stalks only, just a fraction above the end.
This leaves the inside of the carrot intact and, I feel, preserves the flavour.
Place them in a steamer, sprinkle with a little salt and steam for about 7 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a skewer but still retaining some firmness and bite.
Serve plain, or I like them tossed in butter mixed with some chopped fresh tarragon leaves.
To cook Winter carrots:
These are available from storage all year round.
To cook them plainly,scrape off the skins and cut them into 2 inch (5 cm) chunks.
Place them in a saucepan with salt and enough boiling water to barely cover them.
Give them about 20 minutes, or until tender but with a little firm bite in the centre.
Drain and place them in a food processor and, using the pulse movement, ‘chop’ the carrots quite small, but don’t overdo it or you’will have a purée.
Quickly return them to the saucepan using a spatula to scrape them back in quickly, add a knob of butter and some freshly milled black pepper,
place them over a gentle heat and stir them around for a couple of minutes to get the heat back in.
1 lb (450 g) of carrots will serve 4.
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