Honey Roasted Carrots

Honey Roasted Carrots – This easy recipe for Honey Roasted Carrots is an example of how vegetables can be amazing. A simple, but delicious side dish. Made in simple parchment envelopes, you can pull the recipe together in just a few minutes and roast while making the rest of your dinner.

- Table of Contents -

1. Making Honey Roasted Carrots
2. Jamie’s Food Revolution and Bob Bittman
3. Honey Roasted Carrots In the (Environmentally-Friendly & Safe) Bag
4. Upgrading the Original Honey Roasted Carrots recipe
5. Carrot Nutrition 101
6. Kitchen Favorites

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Carrots happen to be one of those standby staple vegetables everyone seems to have stashed somewhere in their fridge. But, beyond serving as useful hummus dippers, there’s not a whole lot of creative ways to enjoy this delicious vegetable.

My solution was discovered in Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in the delicious form of honey roasted carrots.

Making Honey Roasted Carrots

I made Jamie’s honey roasted carrots while hosting some friends and their kids over for dinner. Right away, I knew that carrots were a vegetable that all of the kids would like.

Technically, Jamie called for using an aluminum foil “bag” in his recipe. However, I like to cook with parchment.

Jamie’s Food Revolution and Bob Bittman

As a timely coincidence, I made Jamie’s carrot dish on the same day our TIME magazine arrived at the house. The magazine featured Mark Bittman’s How to Eat Now: The Truth About Home Cooking article on the front cover. Both Bittman and Oliver make a strong case for why we need to bring cooking back home. Not only for good health but for good taste and even social perks!

As Bittman asks readers in his TIME magazine article, “Shouldn’t preparing–and consuming–food be a source of comfort, pride, health, well-being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to other humans?”

Encouraging Everyone to Get Back in the Kitchen

And the entire purpose of Jamie’s Food Revolution Cookbook was to get people of ALL ages—including men, women and the kids— back in the kitchen cooking. Oliver’s goal with his cookbook was to encourage everyone to share and teach recipes with their friends and family.

The whole concept of this cookbook is incredibly social. As stated in Oliver’s introduction, “Regardless of recessions and credit crunches, we all need to know how to cook simple, nutritious, economical, tasty and hearty food. Once we’ve got this knowledge we should pass it on through friends, family, and the workplace to keep that cycle of knowledge alive.”

Whatever you make does not need to be fancy. But just getting everyone to eat more REAL food and VEGETABLES is a big huge step in the right direction. I am certain Mark & Jamie would agree. I know my friend Lisa Leake, from 100 Days of Real Food (whose amazing back-to-basics family cookbook just hit the NY Times Bestseller list), would also agree.

Honey Roasted Carrots In the (Environmentally-Friendly & Safe) Bag

I like to keep my family’s environmental exposure to aluminum as low as possible. You can read more about why I like to do this HERE. Therefore, I decided to swap the aluminum foil “bags” called for in Jamie’s recipe for parchment paper homemade “bags”. Parchment bags are easy enough to make. However, you can also purchase ready-made culinary paper cooking bags such as the ones manufactured by PaperChef HERE. 

Not only are parchment paper bags a more environmentally safe choice when compared to aluminum, we believe they are safer too. As an added perk, cooking in parchment – “en papillote”,—seals in nutrients. That seals the deal for me!

Upgrading the Original Honey Roasted Carrots recipe

Also, because I always have to add my own little twist to a recipe, I tweaked Jamie’s recipe a bit. The original recipe didn’t totally align with everything we do here at Clean Cuisine. I don’t personally know Jamie, but I know any good chef always encourages culinary creativity, so I am certain Jamie would not be offended.

The tweaks I made included eliminating the bacon, swapping marmalade for raw honey, using organic olive oil instead of butter and adding more detoxifying garlic just for the heck of it.

But basically the cooking method and flavors were all Jamie’s. Thank you Jamie!

Carrot Nutrition 101:

So many people that are concerned about their body weight will routinely avoid “high sugar” fruits and vegetables such as carrots and bananas. We have heard this so many times that we simply had to debunk the carrot myths once and for all and give the real scoop on carrot nutrition in an article HERE.  While you’re at it, learn about bananas HERE.

If you don’t have time to read the full articles, the bottom line is that we can assure you nobody ever got fat from eating too many carrots or banans!

And now for the easy-peasy recipe for honey roasted carrots (finally!!)…

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