Honey Balsamic Roasted Carrots Recipe - The Cookie Rookie® (2024)

FAQs

Can you substitute baby carrots for carrots? ›

The peeling and washing process also can diminish the flavor a bit and slightly decrease the nutrition, but luckily, they are still great to eat and share similar nutrition benefits to regular carrots.

Add sliced carrots to the pot of water and bring the water back to a boil. Boil sliced carrots for 4-5 minutes, baby carrots for 6-7 minutes, and whole carrots for 10-15 minutes. This time will vary slightly depending on the thickness of the carrots. Carrots will be done boiling when they are fork tender.

But here's the big secret about baby carrots: They're actually pieces of carrots. "Cut into two-inch pieces and peeled, and put in a bag," explained Jeff Huckaby, the CEO of Grimmway Farms, the biggest carrot grower on Earth. One regular carrot might be cut into two, three, even four baby carrots.

Baby carrots in a 100-gram serving contain 35 calories. These carrots are equally high in essential nutrients as regular, mature carrots, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, and more. Carrots cooked without salt, in a 100-gram serving, contain: 35 calories.

No matter which way you cook them, carrots are a healthy choice. Steaming is a slightly better pick since the carrots don't lose as many of their nutrients to the water. (Steaming is also more environmentally friendly since it uses less water.)

Another study showed both boiling and steaming increased levels of beta carotene. But try to cook carrots whole, as cutting can reduce nutrients by 25%. Wait and wash veggies just before cooking to preserve nutrients. In fact, cooking veggies whole is often the best choice to preserve nutrients.

But if your carrots are cooked, they'll only last 3 to 5 days in the fridge, so make sure to eat that leftover stir fry this week.

They're not actually “baby.” The package might claim otherwise, but most carrots sold as “baby carrots” are just regular carrots that have been cut into two-inch pieces, shaved, and polished down to that snackable size. They don't actually taste like real carrots.

A baby carrot is a carrot harvested before reaching maturity and sold at that smaller size. A baby-cut carrot is a small piece cut from a larger carrot; baby-cut carrots are often marketed as "baby carrots", leading to potential confusion.

Myth #1: Baby Carrots are grown in the perfect 2-inch form that we know them as. Baby carrots aren't actually grown this way. They are cut from larger carrots and then polished and washed by machines. This is why they are so uniform in shape and size.

How many baby carrots equal 2 medium carrots? ›

One cup serving of carrots is about 2 medium carrots, 12 baby carrots or about two cupped handfuls of chopped carrots. Most kids need 1½ to 3 cups of vegetables each day.