When it comes to cooking carrots, there are several different techniques you can use – but which one produces the juiciest, most flavourful honey-glazed carrots?
Carrots have long been one of the most beloved vegetables in Britain, and it’s easy to see why. They’re wonderfully crisp and tasty when served raw with a couple of dips, and they become so tender and golden when cooked in a honey glaze.
If you’re taking charge of Sunday dinner this week and want to impress everyone with your carrot game, there’s one technique that outshines all others. In an attempt to discover the best way to prepare honey-glazed carrots, I put several different methods to the test. The winning batch was ready in considerably less time than the rest, and tasted so much better too.
Whenever I’ve made glazed carrots previously, roasting them in the oven has always been my go-to approach. But for the sake of comparison, I also whipped up a batch in the air fryer and on the hob as well.
I hadn’t even considered that you could cook them on the hob without boiling them, which has to be one of the worst ways to eat carrots. The flavour and texture are just not good, and I firmly believe that if you’re not a fan of carrots, you simply haven’t been cooking them properly.
To keep things even, I used the same ingredients for each recipe. All you’ll need is a couple of carrots, roughly a tablespoon of honey, a pinch of salt and a knob of butter. As I was preparing a small tasting portion of each, you may need to double or even triple the quantities for bigger helpings.
Here’s how I prepared each portion of carrots, and which one came out on top.
Oven-roasted carrots
First, knowing this would be the most time-consuming method, I got started on my oven-roasted carrots. I peeled and sliced the vegetables into batons, heated my oven to 180°C, and placed them in a roasting dish along with the honey, salt, butter and a dash of water.
This is the approach I’ve relied on for years, and one I find myself returning to time and again. Admittedly, it does require patience – roughly an hour to an hour and 15 minutes – but the carrots generally turn out quite well.
Give the carrots a good stir midway through cooking, and once done, they should be beautifully glazed. These particular carrots ended up spending around an hour and 10 minutes in the oven.
They tasted wonderfully sweet, though perhaps not as crispy as I would have preferred. This method earns points for being fairly hands-free, but it does fall slightly short when it comes to texture.
Air fryer carrots
I’m a huge fan of my air fryer and use it almost daily, yet strangely, I’d never attempted roasting carrots in it before. One of the best advantages of the air fryer is its speedy cooking ability, so most online recipes I came across suggested leaving them in for 15-20 minutes.
I never bother preheating my air fryer, so I grabbed one of my silicone liners, tossed in the carrots and glaze ingredients, gave everything a good mix and set it to 180°C for 20 minutes, stirring halfway through as before. I had high hopes for this method becoming my new go-to, but it left me feeling a bit let down.
The carrots cooked unevenly, even after giving them a stir, and much of the glaze simply pooled at the bottom of the liner rather than coating the carrots properly.
They still tasted pleasant enough, but I’d expected this method would deliver a crispier, caramelised outer layer, as the air fryer often does. That said, it’s a reasonably good technique if you’re pressed for time but still want a fuss-free way to prepare your carrots.
Carrots on the hob
Finally, the moment came to test glazed carrots on the hob. For some reason, I assumed carrots would be far too tough to cook through properly on the stovetop, especially as the BBC recipe I followed stated they only needed around 15 minutes — making it the speediest recipe I tested.
The sole adjustment I made was swapping butter for sunflower oil, as I felt it would be better suited to hob cooking. All that’s required is to heat the oil, tip the carrots into the pan and leave them to cook for roughly seven minutes without touching them.
Once the time is up, squeeze in your honey, then add salt and a splash of water. This will begin to sizzle vigorously, so take care it doesn’t splatter upwards or onto the flame.
You can then stir everything together, continuing to do so for a further five minutes or so, until the liquid has fully evaporated. The whole process took no more than 15 minutes, yet the carrots turned out beautifully golden and appetising with an amazing char on them. Given the short cooking time, I fully expected them to be virtually raw in the middle — but I was wrong.
The outside was crispy and caramelised, while the inside remained delightfully juicy with a satisfying bite that wasn’t undercooked. I was astounded and couldn’t believe I’d never attempted this cooking technique before.
It may require the most effort of all three methods I tested, but trust me, it’s absolutely worth it. Next time you’re making a nice dinner and fancy some carrots on the side, forget the oven and the air fryer and give the hob a go — you won’t be disappointed.
