Baby carrots. You find them everywhere. On vegetable trays in your child’s lunch box and wrapped in the produce section. Except they’re probably not baby carrots at all but rather “baby cut carrots.” Real baby carrots look like the garden vegetable that Peter Rabbit would nibble on before he stepped in a pickle. They’re actually smaller and they’re sweet and tasty. The baby carrots you think of because that’s what they’ve been sold to you as are stumps that look like little orange fingers. They’re not pulled out of the ground in this shortened state. They’re actually fully grown and have been machine cut down to a smaller size then scraped round and packaged.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 3deez | 2023-08-21 14:28:06 |  195,878 Views |
You were lied to about carrots 😲
If you’re past a certain age and can’t remember seeing baby-cut carrots in the store that’s because they didn’t exist as such until 1986. That’s when California carrot farmer Mike Yurosek came up with the idea of taking a fully grown carrot and cutting it down to size. Yurosek was trying to figure out how to sell misshapen carrots to local grocery stores and decided to cut them by hand. Promoting carrots this way actually worked. Now it seems like you can’t avoid it. If you show up at a party you’ll probably see a tray of baby-cut carrots in the dip section—usually near the junk food. But don’t confuse them with actual baby carrots.
Baby-cut carrots are literally effortless. No washing no peeling no slicing. Sure they’re tempting! They save time and they taste great tossed in ranch dressing. But if you want flavorful truly fresh carrots you might want to consider saving baby-cut carrots for emergencies and lazy days and going back to regular carrots. Because baby-cut carrots are shaved they lose the skin that protects them as they grow and are therefore at risk of drying out. Or the opposite happens: you open a bag and suddenly find your countertop soaked in liquid—water that’s meant to keep the carrots appealing but it can also make them go slimy.
If time is no object you’ll be rewarded with a tastier carrot if you forgo the packaged “miniatures.” You don’t always need to peel a carrot—whether or not you peel it is a personal preference and depends on the type of meal you’re making—just give it a good wash to make sure it’s clean enough to eat. And if you’re concerned with the aesthetics of your meal a regular carrot just looks better! Slice it into nice round wedges for soup cut it into sticks for those lunchbox snacks roast it whole for a rustic meal and make it the star of a creamy casserole. Or if you’re trying to take the acid out of your tomato sauce you can’t go wrong with a carrot for a little extra sweetness.
