Vegetables for vitality: carrots

If one vegetable gets top prize for nutritional value and versatility, it's the carrot. Recipes for them feature in cookbooks from just about every country in the world.

Packed into 125 millilitres (half a cup) of cooked carrots:

• 35 calories
• almost twice the daily requirement for vitamin A, in the disease-fighting form of beta-carotene
• a good supply of vitamin B6 to maintain brain function
• fibre to keep the digestive tract healthy

Season

Available all year, but most abundant during winter and early spring.

What to look for

Whether you buy them long and tapered or short and stubby, in bunches or in plastic bags, choose smooth, firm, evenly coloured and evenly shaped carrots. Avoid carrots that are soft, withered, oversized or green around the shoulders. For carrots sold in bunches, look for ones with bright green, fresh-looking feathery tops. Small, slender carrots are usually the sweetest.

Storing

• Discard the leafy green tops before storing carrots because they steal nutrients from the roots.
• Keep carrots, loosely wrapped, in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator.
• Tiny, early carrots keep only a day or two, while large carrots keep for at least a week. Small, bagged carrots are usually good for a couple of weeks.

Preparation

Many of a carrot's nutrients are concentrated just below the skin's surface. For this reason, scrub tender young carrots rather than peel them. Large not-so-young carrots may require peeling.

• Basic cooking
• Carrots can be boiled, steamed, roasted, grilled and added to soups and stews. Raw carrot sticks and raw baby carrots are a nutritious snack. Grated carrots add colour and nutrients to salads and sweets. Sliced carrots can be steamed, stir-fried or roasted to serve with or without other vegetables as a side dish. Turn freshly cooked carrots in butter, dill, salt and pepper to coat.
• To glaze carrots, combine brown sugar, salt, ginger and a little cornflour in a small saucepan. Add orange juice. Cook, stirring, until the mixture thickens. Stir in butter and spoon over hot roasted carrots.
• To braise, place carrots in a saucepan with butter, orange juice and zest, sugar, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, lower heat and cook for five minutes. Uncover, raise heat, and stir until liquid has evaporated and carrots are tender.

• Use carrot juice instead of water in homemade bread or pizza dough to add extra nutrients.
• Sauce barbecued chicken with a carrot-based gravy: sauté sliced carrots with olive oil and garlic until very soft and then purée with carrot juice and lemon juice to taste.
• Substitute carrot juice for stock in soups, stews and sauces.
• Use grated carrot as a substitute for coconut in biscuits and cakes to cut calories and boost nutrition.