Chantenay carrots are small and sweeter than the long/hard carrots you can buy in a greengrocers. They don’t take as long to cook.
You can cook them the same way you’d cook any other carrots, but for less time. Most of the time I’ll just steam the carrots – although you can roast Chantenay carrots, or use them in any other way you’d use other carrots. All you need to think is “it’s just a carrot – I’ll do it how I usually do” and then bear in mind they won’t need cooking for quite so long. It’s that easy… it really is “just a carrot!” 🙂
Personally I steam Chantenay carrots – which you can do in a regular electric steamer, or on top of a saucepan of boiling water in a steamer basket. Personally, I just toss the carrots into my microwave steamer and add water, then steam them for five minutes.
One “cheat” for cooking any carrots is that you don’t need to top and tail them – traditionally, to cook a carrot you’ll peel the outside and then cut off the tops and the bottoms, which is called topping and tailing. Instead of that, with Chantenay carrots I do this:
- First, clean the Chantenay carrots. Just give the outside a rubbing down – you can scrape them, or peel them if you wish to, but I just keep a kitchen sponge/scourer handy and use the green scourer side to give them a brisk rubbing down.
- Put the whole carrots into the steamer, without cutting the tops/bottoms off them.
- Steam for 5 minutes.
- I will then top the carrots, slicing off the top part where the greenery was attached. This is simply because it’s easier to cut a cooked carrot than to cut a raw one! It’s a food cheat really as it’s easier when the carrot’s soft and cooked.
These are the perfect vegetable if you’re bone idle and lazy (like me), or if you’ve any disability or issues regarding grip and strength.
