Carrots
Carrots are purple or white root vegetables which come from Afghanistan. What?! Well, they were! Then a few hundred years ago, clever farmers in the Netherlands bred orange ones to honour the House of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family. During the Second World War, British gunners were shooting down German planes at night, and to cover up the use of their secret radar technology the RAF circulated a story about their pilots eating loads of carrots. So unfortunately carrots aren’t the magic answer to having night vision, but eating them will help to keep your eyes healthy thanks to their beta-carotene content.
Nutrition
Carrots are high in beta-carotene, this is the pigment that gives them the strong orange colour. Enzymes in the body convert beta-carotene into retinol, a form of vitamin A that is essential for eye health.
Shopping Guide
You want a strong orange colour but look out for brown spots on the carrots.
Storage
To store bagged whole carrots, keep in the bag in the fridge for over a week. For bunched carrots, make sure you remove the green tops before storing in the fridge.
Serving Suggestions
Carrots are great on their own raw or when roasted, boiled, steamed or stir fired. Try adding a couple to mashed potato for extra flavour and colour or grate them into soups and salads.
Seasonality
Buying veg in season is not only great for the planet, it can be good for your wallet, too! Seasonal veg are often cheaper and frequently taste better, so can be a better time to try with a child as the often sweeter, riper taste is more enjoyable.
Coming In:
June
At Its Best:
July - April
Engage
Here are some of our favourite ways to engage kids with carrots:
Arts & Crafts
Start simple with some non-food based engagement. This is especially helpful for a fussier child or those with sensitivities around food.
DOWNLOADS:
For carrots, why not try making a carrot face mask, a cut-out and colour carrot or carrot crown?
If you’d like to know more about how you can use arts and crafts to introduce reluctant kids to new vegetables hit this button…
Puzzles & Games
Puzzles and games are all about fun and centering them on veg brings a positive association with it. Like arts & crafts, this is great for those who aren’t yet ready to interact physically with the veg, but it can still be fun for all!
DOWNLOADS:
For carrots, why not try our Carrot Launcher or Get Over It Carrot game?
If you’d like to know more about how you can use puzzles and games to introduce reluctant kids to new vegetables hit this button…
Science
Science allows for curiosity, play and hands-on experiments. It helps kids to become fascinated with veg – how it looks, reacts, smells, cooks and more. Finding fun and simple experiments to allow kids to play with their veg makes them curious about it and helps them approach it in a positive way.
If you are just starting out with kitchen science, start small by exploring the different colours of carrots – you can find rainbow bunches of carrots in greengrocers and they can be great fun to explore with kids! Did you know that carrots were purple or yellow, not orange, originally? They were bred to be orange in honour of the Dutch royal family!
WATCH:
If you feel like a more silly DIY-confident science experiment, all you need is a drill, a large carrot and a straw! Watch Stefan Gates’ carrot flute experiment and have a go, it’s a giggle for kids to watch and play!
Sensory
Sensory exploration can be a wonderful introduction to physically interacting with veg. Turn it into a positive, pressure-free experience by starting off with the golden rules of “You don’t need to try and you don’t need to like.” Reassuring a child that, while they have a chance to taste a veg, they don’t have to, and are not expected to like it if they do, can make them more happy to engage with it.
Why not use carrots as a way of exploring smell? Try tossing some carrot slices or sticks in a little cinnamon and try taking a bite of a carrot with your nose pinched, and another without. Can you notice the difference? 80% of flavour is actually in the smell, so this is a great way to explore flavour! If your child doesn’t feel up to taking a bite, they could lick instead, or sniff a carrot slice with cinnamon and one without to compare how adding flavouring impacts our experience of veggies.
WATCH:
Sensory expert Ruth Platt from TastEd explains how to use senses to introduce your child to carrots.
Kids in the Kitchen
Children who help to prep and cook veg are more likely to eat it. If you feel your child is ready to help and could benefit from it, keep the stress and mess to a minimum by choosing one simple task for them to do as part of the prep, meaning they can be involved and feel like the recipe is in part ‘theirs’, but also not make the process too much longer or more complicated.
For a younger child, why not help them to grate a couple of carrots? Show them how to do it safely, and you can add the grated carrots to sauces, or even make a side salad for tea by asking them to squeeze the juice from an orange over the grated carrots!
For an older child, it could be a great opportunity to learn some essential knife skills – why not use a couple of carrots to help them learn the claw grip by slicing into rounds?
DOWNLOADS:
Use our Kitchen Ninja chart and videos to find simple ways for kids to help in the kitchen.
Your Food
Carrot has a natural sweetness and beautiful colour many kids love, and for kids who love crunchy foods, just some raw carrot sticks with a tip is often perfect! But if you need something more, bring out carrot’s sweetness with our simple sides and by adding carrots to some of your family favourite dishes…
Recipes
If You Like Carrots…Try
Does your child enjoy carrots? That’s great! Carrots are sweet and crunchy (raw – or soft when cooked), so why not try a similar texture and/or taste…
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it!
The first thing to do is remove the pressure. If the veg doesn’t get eaten, it’s not the end of the world. There will be other days, other dinners, other chances. Fun is key here – try not to worry about mess, perfect table manners, or playing with food. Instead, focus on making the process of getting the food to the plates, readying the table, and the actual eating relaxed.
Try making one of our simple carrot sides (like a grated carrot salad with simple jar dressing) and ask your child to help with one small part of the recipe (like grating the carrots, or shake-shake-shaking the dressing in the jar).
While the dinner you are serving it with is cooking, ask your child to come up with a funny name or story for the carrot salad and to design a menu with that name or story on for everyone to enjoy!
The Wonderful World of Veg
Check out our vegepedia. When to buy in-season. How to store them to keep for longer. How to engage children with each veg, and simple ideas of how to prepare and cook them for maximum taste and minimum waste. Select a veg…