Sweet, delicious caramelized baby carrots are a unique side dish. It amazes with its simplicity, because you don’t expect anything incredible from such a dish, because it often seems that the taste of the dish directly depends on the effort and time spent on it, and the more ingredients included in its composition, the better the final result should be .
But this is absolutely not true when it comes to cooking, because here the most delicious dishes are always based on the highest quality, fresh products - this is the key to success. A striking example is caramelized carrots: if you cook them once, you will remember them forever, love them and appear on your table more than once.
Caramelized carrots are incredibly tasty: sweet, aromatic, soft and tender, but elastic at the same time. The whole secret of such a tasty dish is that carrots themselves are a sweet vegetable, and therefore all combinations with sweet ingredients will certainly be successful. In addition, the carrots retain their vitamins and bright, appetizing color, and are topped with a glossy caramel sauce. This dish looks very attractive!
You can serve caramelized carrots in completely different ways. It can be a hot appetizer, an appetizing side dish as an alternative to the usual potatoes, salad or vegetable puree, and it can also be an independent dish. In this form, even children will eat it with appetite, because it tastes so much like candy.
It is best to caramelize carrots immediately before serving, and you can cook them in two ways - in a frying pan or in the oven. Choose the one that is more convenient for you, and the result will be stunning in any case. To prepare the dish, give preference to small young root vegetables - about 10-12 cm long.
Ingredients
- 250 grams of young carrots
- 30 grams butter
- 1 tbsp. spoon of sugar
- 0.5 tsp cinnamon
- a pinch of salt
Yield: 2 servings as a side dish and 1 serving as a main dish
Preparation
First prepare the carrots. If you are using young carrots, just wash them thoroughly under running water with a hard sponge. If the carrots are old, then remove the peel from the fruit. Cut off the remaining petioles.
Boil water in a large saucepan and boil the carrots in it for 7-8 minutes until half cooked.
While the carrots are cooking, start making the caramel. To do this, melt the butter in a frying pan, adding sugar and salt.
When the sugar has dissolved a little, add cinnamon to the caramel.
21.01.2015
Caramelization. How to Caramelize Carrots and Other Foods- this is a recipe article in which I will show and tell you in detail and with photos how to caramelize vegetables, fruits and even meat. My first recipe on this blog - , in it the onions are also caramelized before they are added to the broth, which gives the French soup a unique taste, this first course is a godsend! Caramelization- this is not just a kitchen process, this is real chemistry. By caramelizing, for example, vegetables, you can “extract” a sufficient amount of sugar from them and turn a simple dish into a real masterpiece. What is caramelization. How to caramelize foods, I will outline in this post. A caramelized carrots will be a good example. Plus, it's a wonderful original garnish, filled with the taste and sweetness of the vegetable itself.
Ingredients
- - 2 bundles or 8 pcs (young)
- - 50 gr
Cooking method
Caramelization is the process of oxidation of sugars when they are heated, and in simple words in cooking it is simmering a product in sugar syrup. But that is not all. There is caramelization with the addition of sugar, and there is a way to “extract” sugar from the product itself, so that in the future it languishes in it. Let's consider the second option using caramelized carrots as an example. We prepare a couple of bunches of beautiful young carrots - they are very sweet, they contain the largest amount of sugar. We peel them, wash them and cut them into medium-sized cubes. 
To speed up the cooking and caramelization process, initially you need to boil it a little. Place the chopped carrots in boiling water and cook for 6 minutes after boiling. 
After the carrots have cooked a little, drain all the water through a colander, transfer it to clean ice water, drain the water again through a colander and leave it aside for a while. 
In order for the caramelization process to be most successful, you should take a cast iron frying pan, which maintains the desired temperature as much as possible throughout the entire process. We put it on high heat and warm it well for a few minutes, then reduce the heat to medium, pour in a little olive oil and put a generous piece of butter in it. We wait until the butter melts. 
Place the carrots in the pan and leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly. The carrots should become soft, but not fall apart. 
Halfway through the process, season with thyme, salt and pepper. 
Serve as a side dish for meat or fish. This time I prepared
and poured it with spicy chimichurri sauce
. It turned out very tasty! 
You can caramelize other vegetables using this principle. For example, caramelized onions, as I said above, make delicious French onion soup
. Onions and leeks should not be boiled in advance, but should be simmered for about half an hour. And a set of vegetables such as onions, carrots, celery and garlic can become an excellent soup base if it is caramelized well and for a long time. 
In addition to caramelizing vegetables, you can also caramelize fruits, but in this case you must stick to the option with added sugar and keep the fruits in the pan for no longer than 10 minutes so that they do not lose their taste. Stewed fruit, as you can imagine, will not be tasty. To do this, heat the frying pan, pour sugar into a dry frying pan and wait until it turns yellow and turns into caramel. Add water (1/3 of the amount of sugar), mix well, wait a couple of minutes, stirring constantly. Add chopped fruit and leave to simmer for 10 minutes. You can add cinnamon, vanilla or other seasonings that you like. By the way, the exact same procedure can be carried out with meat so that it is covered with a sweet, golden caramel crust, only it is better to use butter instead of water.
That's all the secrets. I really hope the article " Caramelization. how to caramelize carrots and other foods" will be useful to you. And caramelized carrots was a great success. Now you know how to properly caramelize foods, so experiment and, of course, enjoy your food!
To prepare caramelized carrots, prepare the necessary ingredients. If the carrots are young, then simply scrape them with a knife, removing the top layer. If it is already ripe, then you need to remove the peel using a vegetable peeler.
Rinse the peeled vegetables in water.
Pour half the amount of granulated sugar and salt into the frying pan, pour in hot water and stir the spices so that their crystals dissolve in the water.
Place the frying pan on the stove, bring its contents to a boil - the syrup will be covered with large air bubbles.
It is at this moment that put the washed carrots into the syrup and simmer them on low heat for about 2 minutes, then turn them over to the other side.
Add water and add the remaining granulated sugar. You can add any other spices you wish if children will not eat the dish: thyme, oregano, rosemary - trust your culinary imagination.
Simmer the carrots on low heat with the lid closed for about 10-12 minutes. The vegetables should absorb the salty-sweet syrup to the middle, and remain slightly hard in the very middle.
Place the caramelized carrots on a platter and serve hot or cold with a light drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. If you don’t like vegetable oil, then melt the butter and pour it over the juicy and bright carrots. The dish can also be served with cream, sour cream, and thick yogurt.
