The Best Roasted Frozen Carrots Recipe - Build Your Bite (2024)

FAQs

The Best Roasted Frozen Carrots Recipe - Build Your Bite? ›

Roast the frozen carrots at 425 degrees for 25 – 30 minutes, checking to stir/flip every 10ish minutes. You can cook them even longer for more caramelized crispy edges! This is a very forgiving recipe, and these will taste more amazing as they continue to cook a bit longer.

Your frozen carrots go directly from the freezer to the oven, without thawing. This is important! The carrots will take a brief detour as you toss them with seasonings and a few other ingredients. Then into the oven they go to roast for 20-30 minutes.

Undercook them, and the texture is tough and dense. Overcook them, and they're dry and wrinkled. The secret is to soften the carrots slightly by boiling them briefly before roasting. The texture will be firm-tender with just the right amount of caramelization on the outside.

Cooking instructions

Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan, then add the carrots and parsnips and toss to coat in the oil. Add the thyme, cinnamon, star anise and some seasoning. Cook over a medium heat for 15-20 minutes, turning the vegetables frequently, until golden brown and almost cooked through.

Frozen carrots can end up a bit rubbery due to moisture loss from the freezing process.

I find that I get lots more crispy edges when I roast vegetables on a rack in the upper third of the oven. Use the convection feature on your oven, if you have one. The fan helps better circulate hot air. Or try the air fryer!

I only boil these for a couple of minutes; you don't want them fully cooked when you par-boil. You want them partially cooked so that you can finish them off by roasting them. If you don't par cook the carrots, they will cook faster on the outside than the inside when they are in the oven.

Using the wrong pan

Yes, you can roast vegetables in a casserole dish or even a cake pan. But the high sides make it harder for the water inside of the vegetables to evaporate during baking, setting you up for sogginess. Instead? Use a simple rimmed baking sheet.

What makes carrots taste better? ›

Or, to bring out their fresh, woody flavor, add some anise. If you're roasting your carrots, toss them in olive oil first. This will help keep the moisture in them. To bring out the sweetness in your carrots, season them with orange or lemon juice or a little brown sugar and butter.

Mixing carrots and oranges can be very dangerous. This mix has been known to cause heartburn and kidney damage.

Roasting carrots

You can roast the carrots from frozen. Place on a baking tray, drizzle with a little oil and seasoning and roast at 210C/200C fan/gas 7 for about 10-15 minutes, depending on their size, until cooked all the way through.

The breaking of cells in the freezing and thawing process causes the terpenes to leak, making the carrot sweeter — however, this same breakdown will probably have some negative impact on the texture.

In most cases, it's best to skip the thawing process and go straight to cooking, according to Goldfield. There are a variety of different methods you can follow to cook frozen vegetables; it all depends on the dish you're making.

Don't thaw frozen vegetables:

Even if you pat them dry, they'll still cook up to be soggier than if you cooked them straight from the freezer because they've absorbed a good deal of the water already.

Most of the time, you don't need to thaw frozen vegetables before cooking with them—but it depends on what you're making. For soups, stews and pastas, you can toss still frozen vegetables right into the pot. These dishes can withstand some extra moisture, and the warmth will thaw out the veggies.

Roasting carrots

You can roast the carrots from frozen. Place on a baking tray, drizzle with a little oil and seasoning and roast at 210C/200C fan/gas 7 for about 10-15 minutes, depending on their size, until cooked all the way through.

Frozen carrots are best used in soups, stews, casseroles, or other hot dishes. You don't even need to thaw them, or shorten the cooking time, when using them in these kinds of recipes. If you want to thaw frozen carrots and eat them in cold dishes, they won't be as good as fresh ones.