Baby carrots are not baby carrots

July 8, 2020 9:48 AM

Baby carrots are not baby carrots (Washington Post): They're milled, sculpted from the rough, soiled, mangled things we call carrots, and they serve as an example, though perhaps not a terribly grave one, of how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food. In Case You Didn't Already Know, Baby Carrots Are A Big Fat Lie (HufPo): In fact, baby carrots were originally one farmer's ploy to sell more carrots. The late Mike Yurosek, a California carrot farmer, invented baby carrots in 1986 because most full-grown carrots were too ugly to sell. The Origin and Evolution of Baby Carrots (World Carrot Museum): Real baby carrots (miniature version of full size) are what they are, about 3 or 4 inches in length. Baby "style" cut carrots (those whittled down from larger carrots) started off by the "inventor" as being approx 2 inches in the 1980's, and have remained so, more or less, ever since. Why Are Baby Carrots Always Wet? (MEL): Water is literally added to the bag. Without it, the carrots would dry out. Baby Carrots – 3 Myths You Need to Know (Craving Health): Myth: Baby Carrots are unsafe to eat because they are soaked in a toxic chlorine bath.
posted by not_the_water (75 comments total)

Whatever. Baby carrots are bite-sized and delicious and you can pry them from my cold, dead hands. #TeamBabyCarrots
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:53 AM on July 8, 2020 [28 favorites]

Turns out vegetables need branding (c.f. Portlandia). MEL article info that was surprising to me:

It’s good ecological practice, preventing tons of full-sized carrots too unattractive for grocery stores from going to waste and also just making us eat way more carrots than we would otherwise. Today, in fact, baby carrots make up 70 percent of all carrot consumption in the U.S.
posted by little onion at 9:54 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

Baby carrots are one of the first things I buy when I am Getting Serious about my weight again. It never fails. I do it, I eat them plain or with a measured amount of hummus, and pretty soon half the bag has gone moldy in the fridge. Whether or not I actually lose the weight, I quit buying them. They taste perfectly nice when I don’t resent them, but when I do, they taste like failure.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:56 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]

Baby corn > baby carrots.

I'll die on this hill.
posted by Fizz at 9:59 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]

BAAAAAAY BEEEEEEEEE CORN DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:04 AM on July 8, 2020 [35 favorites]

"The absolute hubris of humankind..."
posted by box at 10:07 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Baby corn > baby carrots.
I'll die on this hill.

~ Radios-in hill coordinates to artillery...
posted by Thorzdad at 10:14 AM on July 8, 2020 [19 favorites]

I've never had baby carrots go moldy on me, and I've had them sit in the fridge way longer than is prudent. They tend to dry out instead.

In general I am a fan, though.
posted by that girl at 10:16 AM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Agree that baby corn > baby carrots but all that being said:

The only way I can get myself to eat carrots is by either dipping baby carrots in delicious hummus, or by julienneing carrots and mixing them up with freshly minced garlic and stuffing it all in a pita.

I once had a roommate who worked for the FBI (that's a fun story for another time) whose coworker developed carotenemia (orange skin from too much beta carotene consumption) because he sat at his desk and ate two bags of baby carrots every day. Razor sharp, healthy folks there at the FBI. But I digress.
posted by nightrecordings at 10:17 AM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

I have some issues with baby carrots, but that's not their fault. I snacked on some long ago before going to a party where I drank too much, and my vomit was orange, which was unsettling.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:35 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am disappointed by those “myths” I need to know. Why not tell how Isis brought Osiris back to life with baby carrots? Or how Coyote tricked Wolf into eating Bear’s baby carrots? Or what Zeus did with the baby carrots (skip the last one; it’s nasty, and Zeus basically does what he does with every damned thing).
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:41 AM on July 8, 2020 [34 favorites]

They aren't gourmet or especially flavorful, but in an industrial agriculture environment, I'm glad these gnarly carrots are getting sold for food instead of dumped. One downside is they have to come in a plastic bag.
posted by latkes at 10:47 AM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

I thought it was fairly common knowledge at this point that baby carrots were whittled down from bigger carrots, but the bit about water being added to the bag was interesting. The perpetual wetness pushes baby carrots into a category that is almost but not quite entirely too off-putting for me to even consider, but I find that every time I give in to how yummy they look in the store and buy a bag, I open them up, get confronted again with all that moistness, and conveniently forget about them in the veggie drawer until they've gone inedible and I can legitimately toss them in the yard waste bin (which takes a rather vexing amount of time, btw).

I tried planting carrots in my garden this year but only two seem to be making a go of it, but man, the taste of home-grown carrots fresh out of the dirt is such a wild, summery joy and I'm hoping against hope that I get to eat at least one of mine before the slugs do.

(also, totally Team Baby Corn and I think of that scene in Big every time I have them; eating the kernels off the cob like that just never gets old)
posted by DingoMutt at 10:57 AM on July 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

I knew baby carrots started out bigger, but never knew about the polishing drum. I always pictured little carrot lathes.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 11:04 AM on July 8, 2020 [28 favorites]

Yeah sure, and next they'll tell us that pineapples don't grow on trees.
posted by jeremias at 11:05 AM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

I've never seen baby carrots go moldy, they just kind of disintegrate into disgusting mush.

Baby carrots are fine, but I don't quite understand why their cousins baby cut turnip sticks exist. I guess it's a way of selling misshapen turnips? They're not nearly as snackable... the bag might say "tastes great fresh," but... they don't.
posted by oulipian at 11:06 AM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Baby carrots have one job, delivering hummus to my mouth, and they do it perfectly. As long as they continue performing at such a high level, I won't question their credentials.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:07 AM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

We grew small carrots in our garden this year. The variety is called “little fingers” which is... not fantastic branding? Although now that my mind is on that track, carrot veal isn’t exactly appetizing either.
posted by q*ben at 11:08 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'll take a plate of beans over a bag of baby carrots any day.
posted by Token Meme at 11:12 AM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

The late Mike Yurosek, a California carrot farmer, invented baby carrots in 1986 because most full-grown carrots were too ugly to sell.

I don't get this. If ugly is an issue then why don't we have baby potatoes or baby ginger or baby celery root?
posted by Splunge at 11:19 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

OK I will admit to my mind being, like, 18% blown by this. Screw you cynics, I never suspected... Even though, to be fair, they are in no way shaped like actual baby carrots. They do taste like them though. There's really no such thing as a gourmet carrot.

But more importantly, that makes me think they could be shaped like all kinds of other fun things! (and sure, whatever, that too, don't be obvious...) There could be carrot tetrahedra! Carrot double helixes, helices, whatever! Carrot spoked wheels! There's fun to be had, and I plan to have some. I think there's a lathe in the basement somewhere.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 11:20 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yes, broad carrot coins for dipping purposes (or soup) would be nice.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:47 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

They're gross. I have spoken.

If ugly is an issue then why don't we have baby potatoes

We do. They're not widdled down big potatoes but people definitely buy tiny potatoes because they look better.

baby ginger or baby celery root

Because those things rarely make it to the plate in the form they come out of the ground and people don't usually eat them whole and raw.

(Though once I was buying ginger at the corner store and the woman seemed thrilled. "Oh, you like to chew on them, too!" I never returned to that store.)
posted by dobbs at 11:49 AM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

Meh, bread isn't wheat groats, that's not an inherent indictment and honestly if I had to eat unprocessed wheat groats I'd probably starve to death.

People don't eat a whole head of raw lettuce either.

I'm not sure exactly what the problem with the fact that baby carrots are processed is. Almost everything is processed.

If ugly is an issue then why don't we have baby potatoes

yeah, we 110% have baby potatoes.
posted by GuyZero at 11:51 AM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

And for those who don't buy groceries, babby potatoes. But you can get these in less-branded forms as well. I think by weight these are actually fairly expensive vs regular bulk monster potatoes.
posted by GuyZero at 11:55 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

If ugly is an issue then why don't we have baby potatoes or baby ginger or baby celery root?

Ugly potatoes are turned into tater tots.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:57 AM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Whew. I was really afraid this was gonna be some kind of "baby carrots are terrible for you" takedown which would be tragic because without them my vegetable consumption would be cut in half. So easy and so tasty.
posted by straight at 12:02 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

At some point they started labeling them "baby cut carrots" here in Ontario. Maybe they were always that way. But this way it's a bit clearer that it's just larger carrots cut down to baby size.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:04 PM on July 8, 2020

Wait. Baby carrots aren't actually made from little carrots?! What about finger sandwiches?!
posted by haileris23 at 12:06 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Although another one that's almost as easy and tastier is jicama. Grab one of those big heavy root bulbs next time you're at the grocery, slice it up into sticks (discarding the outer rind) and be surprised how crisp, juicy, and mildly sweet it is. Sticks keep pretty well in a tupperware in the fridge.
posted by straight at 12:08 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

In the sciencegeek household we call them ‘lathe carrots’
posted by sciencegeek at 12:49 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm currently growing (or trying to) Parisian carrots.
posted by stevil at 12:53 PM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I always preferred to think of them as cute li'l bunny turds.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 12:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Last spring, I grabbed a bag at the store after not having them for awhile. They looked fresh and snappy and healthy! And when I got home and started eating them, they were!

They were so yummy - and I dunno, maybe my body was just crying out for vitamin A or something - that I kept eating them, and soon realized I had polished off the entire bag. A little later that night, I had the worst gas pains of my life and was in total agony and thought for sure I was going to suffer some bizarre internal injury that would earn me a footnote in a medical journal.

I've been too scared to eat them since, at least raw.
posted by Caxton1476 at 12:58 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Wait. Baby carrots aren't actually made from little carrots?! What about finger sandwiches?!

Don't worry, they still make those with genuine fingers.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:59 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

If ugly is an issue then why don't we have baby potatoes
Sometimes our "save the food" store has big vacuum-packed bags of potatoes cut to a sort of rounded diamond shape, made for the restaurant industry. And carrots. We don't have baby carrots in ordinary retail stores here.

There's really no such thing as a gourmet carrot.
Oh yes there is. You need to go to a carrot tasting. Not joking.
posted by mumimor at 1:01 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

One of my favourite parts of the farmer-to-customer parts of my CSA share every year (which should be someone's thesis topic as it's practically a reverse-engineering of industrialized food to figure out what cityfolk don't know about plants) is the first week the carrots arrive and there's a big cheery note that YES THOSE ARE CARROTS and you can eat them even when they look that way!

I usually buy full-sized carrots and make carrot sticks, but baby carrots being available have saved me on sooo many trips/to rescue park meltdowns/our snack day/etc. Long live the baby carrot.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:01 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I always buy full-sized carrots, because they last for ever in my crisper drawer, which is particularly important under the Unfortunate Present Circumstances. Eating whole carrots raw is way too much carrot at once for me, but I do sometimes enjoy grating some into a coleslaw or similar cabbage-based salad.

The best baby vegetable is obviously the Brussels sprout, which is an adorable and delicious baby cabbage.
posted by confluency at 1:36 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

I prefer regular carrots, because there is less risk of slime and you can buy a big bag for cheap and they last awhile.

I am glad someone figured out a way to market the ugly carrots, but I am kind of curious how ugly a carrot has to ne to get shunted to the baby carrot production line. The big bags have all kinds of broken carrots, lumpy carrots, divining rod shaped carrots, etc. So are the ones that get infantilized bruised, or what?
posted by the primroses were over at 1:37 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was in New Zealand last year and ran across some baby carrots in a grocery store and, well... they have a different definition down there.
posted by objectfox at 1:53 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was in New Zealand last year and ran across some baby carrots in a grocery store and, well... they have a different definition down there.
Yeah, those are what we have too. Small carrots.
posted by mumimor at 1:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

We don't have baby carrots here. We have worteltjes, also called waspeen (yes, I guess that's a funny word) which is similar: it's smallish carrots, peeled and cleaned, and sold in a bag with some water. They're not all the same size but they are ready-to-eat and pretty nice.
But even nicer than that are the small carrots you can buy in Germany: Snackmöhren. They really are very young small carrots. Very tender and sweet. I sometimes take them for long train or car trips. They're a good travel food.

Fun fact: carrots being orange is branding, too. There used to be all kinds of colours available.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Mumimor, the Snackmöhren I buy in Germany are often from Denmark!
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:57 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Now do baby oil.
posted by Wetterschneider at 2:29 PM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

Baby carrots have one job, delivering hummus to my mouth, and they do it perfectly. As long as they continue performing at such a high level, I won't question their credentials.

I used to love looking at the little haircuts the build up of hummus on my baby carrots had after they'd been swiped through the dip but I realised recently that they all remind me too much of Trump so I stopped looking at them.
posted by urbanlenny at 2:35 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]

q*spouse is adamant to this day that digging into the hummus with the carrot, leaving a divot, is disgusting, deviant behavior, and that dips in general must be groomed with the edible stick implement, leaving one with a lovely hummus zen garden. In quarantine this may have become a major marital rift but it tastes better when you make the holes
posted by q*ben at 3:43 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

I've read all the links and all the comments and I still don't understand why baby carrots aren't made of babies.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:01 PM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I would be happier to have peeled carrots because I'm lazy. I do not require sculpted carrots, and I wonder what happens to all the carrot chaff. RTFA, you say? I already noted that I am lazy. also, don't care that much.
posted by theora55 at 5:20 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I had no idea this was a thing that even existed. In Australia, baby carrots are, literally, young carrots often sold with the tops still attached.
posted by smoke at 5:22 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Pro tip: slice carrot sticks, submerge in cup of water, store in fridge for days of delicious snacking without sliminess

Baby carrots give me the same weird sense of feeling hungrier after eating them that popcorn does. Regular carrots do not, oddly. Someday I hope science solves this snack mystery.
posted by Flannery Culp at 5:32 PM on July 8, 2020

I do not like them Sam I am. But I love adult carrots!
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 5:49 PM on July 8, 2020

Oh man, Trader Joe's used to sell those little round Parisian carrots in their frozen section and I miss them so much. They were so good.
posted by yasaman at 5:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Sticks cut out of adult carrots are better because you can dip directly from the peanut butter jar for longer.
posted by batter_my_heart at 6:08 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Carrots are a delicious snack. I've been eating them raw since I was a child in the 80s. Being lazy, I prefer baby carrots because I need not spend the effort peeling them and then having carrot peel to dispose of.

Oddly, I never saw baby carrots in the store until the mid 90s, despite their apparently being invented in 1986.
posted by wierdo at 6:42 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Due to the lack of demand, most of them were simply thrown away, according to the Carrot Museum.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that somewhere, in this world, there’s a Carrot Museum.
posted by panama joe at 7:43 PM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

This thread is missing my favorite baby carrots anecdote, that time 10 years ago when Big Carrot (uh, Big Small Carrot?) decided this particular snack needed a rebranding. Because of this, I cannot pass a pack of these without my brain shouting BABY CARROT EXTREME!!! (YouTube link) and also, less frequently, "EXTREME PTERODACTYL!"
posted by deludingmyself at 8:06 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I can't even with baby carrots because, I actually like eating carrots with their peel. It makes them taste like an actual vegetable.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:27 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Baby carrots give me the same weird sense of feeling hungrier after eating them that popcorn does. Regular carrots do not, oddly. Someday I hope science solves this snack mystery.

Ugh, APPLES. Why am I so hungry after eating you, darling fruit?
posted by tristeza at 8:51 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I’ve always been able to taste the chlorine bath on them, to the exclusion of the carrots themselves and of whatever mediocre ranch I’m stuck with for a dip. Damn things might as well be marinated in a public pool.
posted by armeowda at 9:27 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

At some point they started labeling them "baby cut carrots" here in Ontario.

I don't know whether to be more admiring of the dexterous babies of Canada, or disturbed by their apparent lack of child labor laws.
posted by pykrete jungle at 11:18 PM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

Baby carrots are fine, but I don't quite understand why their cousins baby cut turnip sticks exist. I guess it's a way of selling misshapen turnips? They're not nearly as snackable... the bag might say "tastes great fresh," but... they don't.

This may be a commercialization thing or maybe an exposure thing but I love home grown raw turnip cut into strips. Way better than cooked. However like I said exposure: my mother packed them in our lunches frequently. However she mommed us and explained that they were rutabagas not turnips. I mean she wasn't wrong but still a mean trick which I'm embarrassed to say I didn't find out about until I'd graduated college and was lamenting at a family get together that I couldn't find rutabaga anywhere.
posted by Mitheral at 11:44 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

They taste like crunchy, slightly sweet water. I prefer my carrots skin-on, so they taste like carrots.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:38 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

The only way I really like carrots is as full-length vegetable peeler shavings. Those little shards that are in mixed bag salads or salad bars might as well be styrofoam. Baby carrots always seem just a little too wet and almost mushy to me.
posted by Night_owl at 5:22 AM on July 9, 2020

Sometimes, even, when a recipe calls for big carrots (like this family favorite), I use baby carrots instead. It may not be the most beautiful choice, but man, I sure enjoy not having to peel anything.

Plus they're excellent snacks. If I'm not paying attention, I can down half a bag easily. My perfect mindless-eating companion.
posted by mosst at 5:57 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm on Team Baby Carrots are Disgusting. All the processing and the wetness in the bag that squicks me out. Carrot sticks all the way.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:38 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was okay with baby carrots until the day I bit into one that had a liquid center. Since then I've been fully on Team Adult Carrot.
posted by slogger at 9:15 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I thought this was common knowledge by now - the bags (at least here) do say baby-cut, not just baby carrots.

I don't know if it's the processing or just the variety of carrot they use, but the baby-cut ones are so much tastier for me. I really tried to adjust to regular carrots (and do still buy them for cooking and dog snacks) because they're less than half the price of baby cut carrots, but there's no comparison. Even peeled, which is a big barrier for my lazy self, they're so much more bitter. I can tolerate them raw but it's not easy to snack on a pound or more without thinking like it is for baby cut carrots. It feels a little overly extravagant but since I can afford it and eating more carrots is almost certainly a good thing, I've started buying baby carrots in every grocery order recently.
posted by randomnity at 11:53 AM on July 9, 2020

I wonder if we have completely different carrot species across the continents.

The idea that normal carrots could be bitter is completely new to me. That said, we have a wide choice of carrots, including all the colors that Too-Ticky mentioned. During autumn and winter we can get huge carrots that are specially good for stew and they are a bit bitter, which is good because otherwise the stew could be too sweet. IMO the purple carrots are a bit bitter too.

Till this post came up I had no idea I lived in a carrot-loving country. I tried to look up the statistics but I can't find any that show carrots pr person. It does seem we produce an insane amount of carrots, though, and I know we import a lot. You learn something every day.
posted by mumimor at 1:18 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

The idea that normal carrots could be bitter is completely new to me.

The bitterness is subtle in my experience, but it's definitely there. This is the reason that many recipes (especially for lighter or sweeter dishes) say to peel carrots. (Next time you do this, try munching on some of the peels – you'll see what I mean.)

Sensitivity to bitterness is highly variable between different people – it's a genetic thing.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:33 PM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Sweetness is determined primarily by the variety of carrot grown but there are environmental factors also. Carrots grown in hotter weather or harvested too early tend be more bitter.
posted by rdr at 9:50 PM on July 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Radios-in hill coordinates to artillery

For the record, it's my call. Dump everything you've got left on my pos. I say again, expend all remaining in my perimeter. It's a lovely fucking war.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:43 PM on July 10, 2020

Wild carrots, sauteed in butter, are delicious and even smaller than baby carrots. But they look a lot like about ten other plants that can kill you, so I don't bother.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:20 PM on July 11, 2020

Aw man this thread is making me so hungry
posted by Kitchen Witch at 2:40 AM on July 13, 2020

The idea that normal carrots could be bitter is completely new to me. That said, we have a wide choice of carrots, including all the colors that Too-Ticky mentioned. During autumn and winter we can get huge carrots that are specially good for stew and they are a bit bitter, which is good because otherwise the stew could be too sweet. IMO the purple carrots are a bit bitter too.

Maybe it's just that the huge carrots you're referring to are similar to the basic cooking carrots here. I'm not sure what huge is for a carrot but they're usually like...the size of a cat leg? I made soup yesterday and tasted the (washed and peeled) cooking carrots for science and they were horribly bitter, though fine when cooked.

I don't think I'm unusually sensitive to bitter tastes. When I've bought the "real" baby carrots (4-5" long, not cut or peeled) from the fancy-person grocery store they're sweet enough to eat without peeling, though the skin is still a tiny bit bitter. And the carrots I've grown in the garden weren't bitter at all even at huge sizes. I don't know why the cooking carrots taste so bad...
posted by randomnity at 8:18 AM on July 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't know why the cooking carrots taste so bad...
AFAIK they are a different sort, and are specifically bred for cooking. Size of a cat's leg seems just right.
There's another thing, that I noticed as a child and haven't tried out since: if you have a nice, sweet tasting carrot that you wash, but don't peel, and then pack it in your lunch box, it will be bitter when you open your box at lunch time. I don't know why that is, but it certainly is. I trust 9-yo mumimor on this and will never, ever put an unpeeled carrot in my lunch box.
posted by mumimor at 8:26 AM on July 14, 2020 [1 favorite]