Carrot

Being the firmest vegetable is the whole story

Carrot has the thickest cell walls of the vegetables you cook with often, so it takes considerably longer than anything else you put in the same pot.

In practice that means one thing: cut carrot the same size as the other vegetables and something will be wrong — either the carrot is raw or everything else has collapsed. Two ways out.

• Cut it smaller. Half the size of the other vegetables is the rule of thumb.
• Start it earlier. In a stir-fry the carrot goes in first and the rest follows; in a soup it goes into the pot first. In a raw dish like coleslaw the logic inverts — it has to be the thinnest thing there, or grated, to be chewable at all.

Carrot going in at the beginning of minestrone and Irish stew, and being julienned and fried first in japchae, is the same rule (knife skills).

Cut on the diagonal it cooks faster

At the same thickness, an angled cut has more surface area, so more of it is in contact with heat. It is not decoration, it is a way of shortening the cooking time. When a stir-fry recipe asks for carrots on the bias, that is usually what it means.

It is sugary, so it browns

Carrot is high in sugar for a vegetable — around 5% — so frying it browns it and brings the sweetness forward, with the Maillard reaction and caramelisation happening together.

• Long-cooked carrot tastes sweet because that sugar has concentrated and caramelised.
• The same sugar means it scorches easily over high heat. Medium is the default when you are softening diced carrot as a base.

It is better eaten with fat

The beta-carotene in carrot is fat-soluble. Eaten raw with no fat, little of it is absorbed, and cooking softens the cell walls enough that absorption actually goes up. "Raw is always better" does not hold for carrots.

Mayonnaise in coleslaw, or an olive oil dressing on raw carrot, is a sound combination nutritionally as well as by taste (cooking oils).

Skin and core

• Skin — peel thinly or just scrub it. A good share of the nutrition sits near the surface.
• Core — big, old carrots have a woody centre that is tough and flavourless. Quarter a thick one, and if the core is pale and stiff, cut it out.
• The green shoulder — bitter. Trim a centimetre off the top.

Storing

• Cut the tops off immediately. Leaves left on keep drawing water out of the root and it goes limp within two days. This is the single most important thing about storing carrots.
• Unwashed, wrapped in paper, in the vegetable drawer: three to four weeks.
• Washed carrots must be dried completely. Left wet, the surface turns slimy.
• Submerged in water in the fridge, even cut sticks keep about a week. Change the water every other day.
• Blanch before freezing. Frozen raw, the cells rupture and it thaws to mush (freezing and thawing).

The white bloom

A whitish surface is drying, not mould. Still fine to eat, but it has lost water, so use it in a soup or a stir-fry. Discard it if it is floppy and wet or smells off.