Easy Oven Roasted Carrots with simple variations

These healthy oven roasted carrots take only minutes to prepare! With minimal ingredients, you can season them in different ways for a delicious side dish. Perfect any time of year, this easy side dish is great for most special diets and even for picky eaters. Make extra to have leftovers or feed a crowd, or just make enough for tonight while you focus on the main meal.

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Vegetable side dishes don’t have to be boring.

Sometimes they are dull, mushy, and bland. Never fear; minimal effort can result in veggie sides with vibrant flavor and even a pleasing texture.

Seasoning is an obvious (and easy!) way to add flavor. Additionally, you can choose different herbs and spices for fresh, varied results.

While there is nothing wrong with steamed vegetables, or stir-fried ones, roasting vegetables give them a wonderful texture and enhances their flavor. More good news? Roasting is really easy and hands-off, freeing you to focus on other components of the meal while the roasting takes place.

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How to Make Oven Roasted Carrots

This is such an easy recipe! Once you have done it a few times, you won’t even need a recipe. It is that simple! Of course, you may want to season carrots differently to go with different meals, or just according to your current whim.

First, prepare your carrots. In these photos, I used pre-peeled rainbow carrots. Aren’t they pretty? I picked them for the color– but pre-peeled carrots are truly convenient! I used 2 pounds, but you can adjust to larger or smaller quantities without much precision. You could choose different carrots:

• use small, whole carrots– peeled or not
• make big, regular-sized carrots into carrot sticks
• chop any size of carrot into bite-sized pieces– a little more work, but it goes fast and is easy to serve
• opt for baby carrots– this takes minimal effort, and you can double or triple the recipe fast

Do I have to peel the carrots?

If you have home grown carrots from healthy soil with nothing untoward ever sprayed on them, you have the least reason to peel them.

I usually peel organic store bought carrots. Even organic carrots have some pesticides and such. Of course, pesticides are absorbed, and not merely on the peels. Carrots are known to absorb a lot, including pesticides, from the soil they grow in.

Happily, organic carrots are widely available and affordable. You can buy a large quantity to save money; they last for a few weeks.

Opponents of peeling generally argue for the high nutrition found in carrot (and other) peels. You can read more here. Of course, it takes a few minutes to peel a few pounds of carrots. Time and effort add up!

Peeling proponents generally cite high levels of lectins in peels. (Read more about reducing lectins.) Lectins are a naturally occuring protective mechanism for plants that also damage the gut, promote inflammation, and inhibit nutrient absorption.

Carrots aren’t especially high in lectins compared to many vegetables. However, if you are very serious about reducing your lectins or are intensively working on healing your gut, you may peel carrots.

Some people find the peel bitter or otherwise unpleasant. I am not bothered, but older, tougher carrots might seem more appealing without peels. Carrot peels tend be more noticeable in roasted carrots than, say, carrots in a stew.

Bottom line– peel them if you want, or don’t. You could go down the carrot-nutrition-rabbit hole, or just keep doing what you do now. To peel or not to peel– it’s up to you!

The other ingredients

• olive oil (or other cooking fat)
• salt
• pepper
• nutmeg

Keep reading after the recipe for different ways to add flavor to your oven roasted carrots!

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Toss the carrots with olive oil.

Sprinkle salt, pepper, and nutmeg over the carrots and toss them a bit, making sure they are all coated with oil and seasoning. I sometimes mix the seasonings together first, but you don’t have to.

Spread the carrots out so they are in a single layer as best you can. They will roast more evenly if they aren’t on top of each other.

Roast the carrots for 20-30 minutes, until they are tender and the outsides are gently browned. You don’t have to use parchment, but it makes for easy cleanup and the carrots will not stick to it at all.

Seasoning Oven Roasted Carrots

With nothing but salt, pepper, and nutmeg, these carrots taste good. However, you can gussy them up in different ways.

• add cinnamon to the nutmeg for extra flavor, or try a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
• add a couple of cloves of minced garlic
• sprinkle in a teaspoon of onion powder, garlic powder, or both
• for a smoky but still mild flavor, add a teaspoon of smoked paprika, with or without the nutmeg
• try any herbs you like– sage, rosemary, Italian seasoning, etc.
• for a southwestern flair, try cumin and chili powder
• or use cumin with curry powder for a different take
• sprinkle with chopped fresh herbs after roasting– parsley, dill, rosemary, cilantro, etc.
• add a tablespoon or two each of melted butter and honey for an especially sweet, kid-pleasing version! I like this with garlic added with the butter and honey. The parchment will blacken; don’t worry about it. You need to watch the carrots and pull them out before they burn. Honey is prone to burning. Brown sugar works in place of honey. Here are a few carrots I roasted with honey– the paper looks scary, but the carrots are fine!

Need more roasted veggie side dishes?

roasted asparagus

roasted Brussels sprouts