The best roasted carrots for Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving! These carrots are baked in a delicious sweet honey sage garlic butter, giving every bite amazing flavor. This is a flexible recipe which can be cooked over a longer or shorter amount of time and at varying temperatures, while still turning out delicious – making it perfect for busy holiday meals.
Carrots have never been the most exciting of the vegetables to me, but these are actually amazing! They seem quite fancy despite being so simple to prepare.
Clearly, you can make these carrots any day of the year. But for me, they are the ultimate Christmas carrots for two reasons:
One is that they are decadent, buttery, and fancy tasting. The honey sage garlic butter leaves no stone unturned in its quest for greatness (and it’s already proven itself in this smashed potato recipe so we know it’s good).
Two is that the recipe is really flexible. I’m calling them roasted carrots, but really they’re somewhere between baked and roasted. We aspire to some crispy edges, but we aren’t trying to totally caramelize them. And because it’s Christmas and the oven is crowded, it’s kind of hard to be precise about the result, but it’s all good here. If they end up a little under or over cooked – they still taste great. And if you can’t cook these at the right temperature – adjust the cook time a little and you’ll be fine. There is a really wide range of acceptable outcomes here.
What you need to know to make the most incredible festive carrots
- When it comes to the quantity of carrots you use, the number one thing is that they fit in the pan properly, and you may end up using a little more or less than the recipe states. I use a 9×13 pan but some pans are more curved than others, so the actual flat roasting space can vary. Have a look at the photos above. You want the carrots to fill the pan, but mostly in a single layer. We don’t want them in a pan that’s too big, with too much extra space around the carrots, because the sage garlic butter will just burn in the empty spaces. We also don’t want the pan too crowded because we won’t have so much potential for browned crispy edges.
- Feel free to add parsnips to the pan to roast alongside the carrots – you better believe they’ll taste amazing here too.
- You ideally want salted butter. If you need to use unsalted, just be sure to season well before putting the carrots in the oven.
- Peel the carrots! We want them to be able to drink in the butter and the skins can stand in the way of that.
- If you want this recipe to be vegan, you’ll need 1) vegan butter that you trust and 2) maple syrup instead of honey.
- As you can see in my final photos, I garnished the carrots with some lemon slices and chopped chives, which was a nice touch, but an optional one.
Christmas Carrots with Honey Sage Butter
Ingredients
- 2 lbs (900 g) carrots, you may use less, see notes
- ⅓ cup (80 g) salted butter
- 25 sage leaves, roughly chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1.5 Tbsp honey
- chives (optional), for topping
- lemon (optional), for squeezing
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F.
- Prepare the honey sage butter. Combine the butter, sage, garlic and honey in a small saucepan over a very low heat. Allow the butter to melt, stirring regularly, until it's all incorporated. Your goal isn't to cook the sage or the garlic, just to melt the better and let the flavors infuse. Take off the heat and set aside.
- Prep the carrots. Peel the carrots, then slice them into sticks. I cut them in half widthways, then quarter each half lengthways. If there is a big variation in width between the top and bottom of the carrots, you can just halve the bottoms to get every slice roughly equal. Scatter them in a roasting tin or glass dish (9×13 inch or 23x33cm sized). Add as many as you can fit into a single layer, then pour the honey sage butter over the top. Add salt and pepper to taste. Use a spatula to mix the butter through the carrots.
- Place in the oven, uncovered, and cook for 25-40 minutes or until the carrots are done to your liking. They may need a longer time if they are in a glass or ceramic dish, if your oven temperature is lower, or if your oven is particularly crowded.They may need a shorter time if they are in a metal pan or if they are being cooked at a higher temperature or at the top of the oven.If they are done before your other dishes are ready, they can sit out, covered, for a little while. They may end up softer, but no harm will be done! (For reference, the batch in the photos took 35 minutes in the oven by itself).
- Serve! If you decant the carrots into a serving dish, be sure to pour the remaining butter in the pan over the top, using a spatula to scrape out every last bit! Garnish with lemon wedges and chives if you wish.
