Glazed Carrots Recipe
I’ve invited Drew Kime of How To Cook Like Your Grandmother to share another one of his famous recipes. This one is for Glazed Carrots. I must admit, as a kid I didn’t like vegetables too much but now I know that’s because of the way they were cooked — boring and bland. But this recipe makes them tasty and great!
I’m always looking for a ways to change things up a bit and make veggies taste GOOD. And that’s what Drew is great at.
This recipe is super easy and healthy. Your kids will love them too!
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Wait! Before you hit the “Back” button on your browser, these are
not the mushy, syrupy pieces of sad that you remember from your
high school cafeteria. They’re a little sweet, a little salty, and still
have a bit of texture to them.
For what it’s worth, I nearly got a fork in the back of my hand when I
reached for seconds without asking my wife if she wanted any more. I
guess that’s a good thing.
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Ingredients
3 cups carrots, diced bite size
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
salt
Directions
You can scale this recipe up or down really easy. You don’t even need to
deal with fractions on the ingredients. I love that. Just peel as many
carrots as your family would eat, dice them, and measure how much you’ve
got. Then get one tablespoon each of butter and brown sugar for each cup
of carrots.
Melt the butter on high heat, add the carrots, salt to taste and stir to
coat all the carrots with butter, and then often enough to keep the butter
from scorching. As soon as the carrots start to change color (they’ll get
a little darker) add the sugar and stir until it’s dissolved.
Add enough water to just barely cover the carrots and reduce the heat to a
simmer. Stir occasionally as the water reduces, until there is almost no
syrup left in the pan, and it’s all on the carrots. Pour out into your
serving dish and pour over any remaining syrup.
And that’s it.
You can see step-by-step photos, as well as plenty of other old-fashioned recipes, at
How To Cook Like Your Grandmother.
Just curious, I recently found Drew’s site recently and was wondering if you think that most of his recipes are pretty healthy? I get the natural food thing and agree, but what about adding the flour and things like that? I love the sites and the recipes, I just wanted to know what you think with your nutrition background! Thanks, Traci
Great question Traci! ! Let me say a few things. First, eating real, whole foods is the best for your body and for your health. Of course, there is room for other stuff as long as you keep it in moderation. But the less processed the food, the better it is.
Drew does have recipes with things like white flour, sugar and butter.
Regular white flour is processed. It is best to try to use other, more whole-grain flours like whole wheat . Whole-grain products are less processed, and therefore contain more of the natural nutrients of the grain. They are often also higher in fiber
I encourage people to make sure most of the grain products they eat regularly contain whole grains. That doesn’t mean a processed-flour can’t be part of a healthy diet; it just means it shouldn’t be your mainstay. I also will often use half regular flour and half whole wheat.
As far as other ingredients, like sugar. It is better to eat real sugar than the fake ones. Same with butter. Eating real butter is better than many margarines.
No one food by itself is bad. The problem with the standard American diet is that we eat too much white flour, sugar, salt, etc — in processed foods, at restaurants, fast food, etc. You’re much better off (weight and health-wise) to cook and make meals at home.
So, overall his recipes are healthy and better than what you’d buy at a restaurant or store.
If you’re still concerned, just be aware that it’s all things in moderation. Don’t eat too much of anything. It’s about portion control too. Changing eating habits takes time and once you do, your taste buds will change too. Like you’ll automatically want less sugar, butter and salt on your foods.
But if you’re still concerned, try his recipes that are vegetable based. For example the carrot recipe above. It does have sugar and butter, but in comparison to the amount of carrots in the recipe, there really isn’t a lot of sugar and butter. It’s better to eat some carrots (even with some sugar/butter) than none at all.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!
-Dinneen
Thanks so much for your thorough answer! I guess I’ve felt a bit… food conflicted lately, haha. I have been turning to his recipes to actually make some real things that are simpler since I’m not real handy in the kitchen, but I’m just cooking for myself and occasionally one other person so that’s a whole other battle. It’s a real struggle to be fresh out of school working and trying to balance that my workout routine AND a healthy meal that isn’t something that just reads as “healthy” on the label because it’s a low calorie heat-and-eat entree. This is a related question, but do you have a Trader Joe’s near you? They have a lot of prepackaged entrees for just one or two people that seem to be fairly healthy and real… organic and meat/veggie rich. I have been relying on those entrees frequently lately because they’re fast and cheap. Again, they read as healthy but now I find myself questioning because they are pre-packaged and frozen.
@ Traci — the concerns you have are very common. Shopping for food and buying pre-packaged things can be a challenge as the food labeling laws are so flexible and fluid, it can be tough to tell what is “really” healthy. Healthy-sounding doesn’t necessarily mean healthy.
So I think I will put together a report, a video, or something to help people navigate a supermarket, how to read food labels, the real meanings of health claims on packages, etc. Does that sound like something that would be helpful?
I DO have a Trader Joe’s near me. I’m in the Northeast, and I’ve found their stores here to be small. But I love Trader Joe’s!! One of my favorite places. To be honest, I don’t buy there pre-packages “meals” — but next time I will spend some time at the store & check them out.
So, not sure if I’m answering your question as it’s really long to answer & not something I can just quickly state in a blog post. Once you learn how to read labels, it will become more clear to you. So that will be something I’ll work on for my readers!
Keep asking questions — it helps me to know what you need and want so I can better serve & help everyone!!
-Dinneen
Yes, that would be fantastic! Thank you for your helpful page and replies!
Anything to make carrots more palatable and these look quite tasty.
I eat carrots stewed with roasts and although this isn’t good for the heart, your recipe is more healthy and I would like to try it.
also I am trying to find recipes without garlic.
J.
Being a required food for my children I have sought for ways to make this vegetable more palatable and delicious for them – and I think this is a great recipe.
Almost 1/3 of my house garden are carrots and before I am having a hard time figuring out what to do with them – now, I think I will stick with making glazed carrots.
I love this recipe! Tried this out the other day and everybody liked it..of course, I referred your blog!