From Soup to Salad to Dessert, Here Are 24 of Our Favorite Carrot Recipes (2024)

A quick question: What vegetable helps you see in the dark? The carrot? Correct! (And it's not actually a myth.) But aside from being a healthy snack, these colorful root vegetables tend to be so taken-for-granted (have you ever seen a produce aisle without carrots?) that we forget how interesting they are. Carrots are veteran team players; Italy's soffrito, and the mirepoix of France (carrots, celery, onion) are the foundations of countless sauces and stews, but these vegetables also excel as the featured ingredient in a dish. We get quite excited about the improvisations possible on the theme of carrot and would like to inspire you to pay attention to them—think of yourself as a hungry rabbit with serious cooking skills. Here, we've gathered our best carrot recipes to lead the way.

Raw carrot salads are crisply delicious, while cooked carrots soften accommodatingly, absorbing cream and cooking juices to become powerhouses of flavor for luscious dips and soups. Whole carrots roast to effortless perfection, caramelizing in slow heat. Naturally sweet, this distinctive carrot trait is part of their versatility. Carrots' sweetness is complemented, muted, or emphasized by strong flavors: citrus juices, the acid of vinegar, the umami of soy and fish sauces, the heat of chiles, hot sauces, or raw garlic, the tang of shallots, warm spices like allspice, cumin, and fennel, and the oils of herbs like rosemary and thyme (for slow cooking) or soft herbs like cilantro, parsley, mint and dill (for last-minute pops of flavor) offer endless opportunities for multi-seasonal meals.

In short, carrots are endlessly versatile and incredibly delicious. But don't take our word for it—whip up a few of the recipes in the slides ahead and you'll never forget to add a bunch of carrots to your shopping cart again.