With a little care, grilling makes an excellent method for cooking carrots. In our recipe for Grilled Carrots with Feta-Herb Sauce, the high, direct heat of the grill imparts a touch of complex, pleasantly bitter char to sweet carrots.
Cooking Tips
The Trick to Tender, Sweet, Perfectly Charred Grilled Carrots
Hint: It involves a microwave.
By Published Apr. 10, 2024.
The challenge with grilling carrots is that it’s hard to cook them evenly; when cooking them over direct heat, their exteriors are likely to burn and dry out before they cook through. Alternatively, grill-roasting them over indirect heat can take forever.
The solution is to precook the dense root vegetables before grilling them.
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Methods such as boiling and steaming take too long and introduce moisture that can inhibit the delicious browning that you want from the grill. Microwaving is the best and easiest way. It softens the carrots without introducing extra water and cuts the grilling time to about 10 minutes.
Simply peel the carrots (leave them whole), toss them with olive oil and salt, cover, and microwave until they’re almost tender, and then you’re ready to heat your grill.
Grilled Carrots with Feta-Herb Sauce
A kiss of fire elevates carrots from sidekick to star.Leaving the carrots whole makes them easy to wrangle on the grill and also makes for a stunning presentation.
Plus, we loved the variety of textures achieved by grilling them whole, with crispy charred pieces at the narrow tips and thick ends that are cooked through but still pleasantly firm.
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Tossing the carrots with garam masala—a complex spice blend typically including black pepper, dried chiles, cinnamon, cardamom, and coriander—adds a layer of flavor and mild heat that complements their mellow sweetness. Adding the dried spices after grilling keeps them from burning and turning bitter over the fire.
Finally, pairing the smoky chargrilled carrots with a luscious, briny feta-herb sauce—simply crumbled feta, fresh herbs, garlic, lemon, and some creamy yogurt whirled in a blender—and a garnish of fresh mint and pistachios makes them impossible to resist.