Carrots + Fire = Sugar

Here it is, guys! The first video (in the new year) of my new web series, Chemistry Bites! Content will be released every Thursday and I’m thrilled to be presenting it. Expect regular updates!

The carrot pancake recipe featured in the video is shockingly good — and this is coming from somebody who doesn’t like carrots. They’re carroty taste is sweet and assertive but unobtrusive, the onions are a really nice counterpoint to the carrot’s sugar, and the rosemary adds a hint of pleasant bitterness. I usually can’t stand carrots, but I can more than stand these carrot pancakes.

On Crusts and Sticking

One of the things that’ll make cooking the carrot pancakes easier is, and listen carefully here, to NOT BE AFRAID THAT THE PANCAKES WILL STICK. When you first put them on the pan, they will stick — but this is a purely temporary condition! In fact, assuming that you’ve properly oiled your pan, all that this initial stick means is that the food is forming a crust. As that crust finishes forming, you’ll find that the food releases itself from the pan nicely and easily.

In other words, cook it over medium heat in an oiled pan, and trust that after four or five (maximum 6) minutes, it will release from the pan without leaving hardly any residue behind. Assuming you’ve followed my instructions, then 9 times out of 10, any initial sticking is purely a sign that the food is forming a crust.

Dips, Dips, Dips

The carrot dip also featured in the video is something that, in order to really taste the way that it should, needs to be sautéed until things start to brown nicely. It also needs the cream and just a tablespoon of butter to really come together smoothly at the end. Like I explain in the video, it is the pectin that will grab everything in the dip and bring it together, but pectin brings things together in a kind of haphazard and lumpy way. Butter and cream, on the other hand, bring things together very nicely, with the kind of smooth texture that we normally associate with good American dip. Which is pretty cool information to have.

The other interesting piece of information to have here is that the grapes are vital to this recipe. The primary sugar in grapes is fructose, which is notably sweeter than sucrose, the sugar found in carrots. That helps the dip become sweet, along with the galactose in the milk cream.