Glazed Carrots With Burnt Honey and Gochugaru Recipe

[Photograph: Sasha Marx]

Glazed carrots are a traditional vegetable facet dish that employs a trés French method known as glaçage, for which greens are cooked at a speedy boil with inventory, butter, and a sweetener resembling sugar or honey till tender and the liquid has lowered to a shiny emulsified sauce. Agitation from the boiling, together with swirling and stirring the pan that the greens are cooking in, gives the mechanical motion required to construct a secure emulsion for the glaze (simply as you’ll for a silky pan sauce or properly finished pasta). Inspired by Korean sweet soy-glazed potato banchan, this model of glazed carrots pairs Bugs Bunny’s vegetable of alternative with an assertively seasoned glaze made with gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) and burnt honey that strikes the proper steadiness between savory, candy, and spicy.

One recurring drawback with glazed carrots (and different root greens) is that the dish can simply veer into too-sweet territory, making them extra of a pre-dessert than savory facet dish. Carrots are already excessive in pure sugars—so as to survive chilly circumstances, carrots convert starch to sugar to behave as pure type of anti-freeze. Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns is well-known for farming “high-Brix” (read: super-sweet) carrots by leaving them within the soil by way of a number of freezes earlier than harvesting, to push the vegetable’s sugar content material to the restrict. So, it is no shock that combining a naturally candy vegetable with an added sweetener like honey or sugar in a glaze could make for an excessively saccharine dish.

For these glazed carrots, we fight this drawback by first deliberately burning the honey, blooming it in a saucepan till it darkens to a molasses shade of darkish brown. This imparts delicate bitterness, balancing the honey’s pure sweetness. Gochugaru is then added together with the carrots, minced ginger, and garlic. The floral warmth of the Korean pepper flakes and recent ginger enhances and tempers the sweetness of the carrots and honey. Stock, butter, soy sauce, and fish sauce are then added to the combo and delivered to a boil.

The carrots get lined and cooked till simply tender and the liquid has emulsified. For the ultimate couple of minutes, the carrots are cooked uncovered, to permit the glaze to cut back to a shiny coating. The of entirety is a touch of rice wine vinegar and sesame oil off-heat, to lend acidity and bolster the toasty, delicate bitterness of the burnt honey. This is a quick-cooking vegetable facet that’s something however an afterthought, and matches in simply as nicely with a weeknight meal as with a vacation feast.