Recipe

Roasted Carrots and Broccolini, Cut-Side Down

Halved carrots and broccolini roasted cut-side down across a sheet pan

Staggered on one sheet pan, glazed with honey and lemon at the last minute, finished with a carrot-top gremolata.

Serves
4
Time
10 minutes prep, 20 minutes cook

Ingredients

  • 1 bunch baby carrots, sliced in half lengthwise
  • 1 bunch broccolini
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp local honey
  • 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • Flaky Maldon sea salt
  • For the carrot-top gremolata: 1/4 cup finely minced carrot greens, 1 tsp lemon zest, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 minced garlic clove

Method

  1. Carrots first. Toss the halved carrots with olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. Lay them cut-side down on a heavy rimmed sheet. Roast at 400F to 425F for 10 to 15 minutes.
  2. Then the broccolini. Flip the carrots and add the broccolini to the same tray, cut-side down. Roast another 7 to 10 minutes, until the carrots are tender and the broccolini tips are crisp.
  3. Glaze and finish. Whisk the honey and lemon juice together and drizzle over the vegetables in the final minute or two. Garnish with the carrot-top gremolata and flaky salt.
The culinary why

Staggering the two. Broccolini florets burn to ash in the time a dense carrot root needs. Adding them halfway is what gets you cooked roots and crisp-tender stems off one pan.

Glaze in the last two minutes. Sugars burn and turn acrid at roasting heat. Going on at the end gives a glossy caramelized coat instead of a bitter scorch.

Use the tops. The greens make a herbaceous gremolata that cuts the natural sweetness of the root, and nothing leaves the kitchen.

From the garden

Eat the rainbow. It is incredible to see the wide variety of colors of various fruits and vegetables available when we have become accustomed to just one, maybe two, in the supermarket.

Carrots come in reds, yellows, purples, whites, and oranges. These were all selectively bred from mutations of wild varieties over thousands of years. However, we predominantly see orange carrots, which rose to popularity when the Dutch started selectively breeding the orange mutations in the 1500s. They were favored for their sweetness and lack of stain that some purple varieties had, and have become the standard varieties we see today.

These different colors have different vitamins and antioxidants for our health, like beta carotene and anthocyanins. Beyond the health benefits and nuanced flavor that a lot of these different colored vegetable varieties offer, they are also just fun. People enjoy the novelty of seeing and tasting the different colors when we have become so accustomed to the standard supermarket varieties.

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