Sous Vide Carrots with Hot Honey

Watch as everyone can’t stop going back for more! Who would have thought drizzling hot honey over perfectly sous vide carrots could be both the easiest thing to make and yet tasting so delicious?

Jump to:

• Why You’ll Love This Side Dish
• How Does Sous Vide Cooking Work?
• Why Sous Vide Carrots?
• What Temperature Do You Sous Vide Vegetables?
• How Long To Sous Vide Carrots?
• How To Keep Your Bag of Carrots Under the Water?
• How To Tell If the Carrots Are Done?
• Recipe Overview
• Ingredients
• Variations and Substitutions
• Instructions
• Great Mains for This Side Dish
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recipe

Why You’ll Love This Side Dish

This is a 5-ingredient side dish that works every single time. Carrots are one of the best vegetables to put through the sous vide cooking process as the end result is always consistently perfect.

They are crunchy yet tender, and every single piece is cooked through the same. You can use normal carrots, heirloom carrots or baby carrots.

The hot honey is absolutely delicious. While everyone is running out to get Trader Joe’s hot honey or Mike’s hot honey, you should try making it at home.

This is not a sauce that you can’t replicate, and in fact, it’s crazy easy. Making hot honey at home allows you to make the quantity you need, manage the spice level and ensure no preservatives are added.

This side dish is classic yet trendy and a really easy dinner recipe. Its simplicity isn’t reflected by its presentation. When I served these up, I got a few “ooooo”, “what’s that?”. It looked familiar yet not quite. Needless to say, it didn’t last very long.

How Does Sous Vide Cooking Work?

No doubt you have heard of sous vide cooking but never really understand what sous vide cooking actually is. Sous vide is the process by which you seal your food, be it vegetables or protein, inside vacuum sealed plastic bags and immerse them in a bath of warm water.

The process is likened to poaching your food. The beauty of sous vide cooking is that you can set it at the temperature you need, usually quite low, and you let it cook away until it is done.

Sous vide cooking is very much a set and forget type of cooking except that instead of just 1 or 2 settings to cook from, you can control exactly what temperature the water will be.

What I love about it is the consistency of the end product. It always comes out exactly how I want it, every single time. It takes the guesswork out of the recipe.

While it does take more time to cook something, I don’t have to watch it. I can literally sous vide a piece of meat, head out to run errands and come home to a perfectly cooked piece of ribeye.

You can also add all sorts of flavouring agents in the vacuum salad bag, or if I want to be super healthy, I like the idea of not using oil at all.

Why Sous Vide Carrots?

Carrots are among the best vegetables to sous vide because you can control precisely how much crunch you would like. If you like it al dente, just nice or soft, you can take all the guesswork out by following recipe instructions or a sous vide cooking temperature guide to tell you exactly how to sous vide carrots.

With everyone’s cooktop or oven differing from one another, you never have this problem with sous vide cooking. My carrots are always on point with just the right amount of crunch yet cooked evenly right through.

What Temperature Do You Sous Vide Vegetables?

The best way to determine what temperature you should be cooking vegetables is to refer to either an actual recipe or sous vide temperature chart.

We have the Anova Precision Cooker, so we use the Anova website to find out most of our needs. But it is safe to say that most vegetables are sous vide around 85°C or 185°F. Check the recipe or guide for the duration.

How Long To Sous Vide Carrots?

Using my Anova Precision Cooker, set at 83.9°C or 183°F. The sous vide carrots take 1 hour.

How To Keep Your Bag of Carrots Under the Water?

For sous vide cooking to work, the sealed bag of carrots must be completely submerged in the water.

This way, the entire contents of the bag will be cooked evenly. One of the challenges many people encounter is that sometimes these bags float, and some parts of the carrots are above water.

So, to keep the bag of carrots underwater, there are a few known hacks that home cooks use. If you can afford a vacuum sealer, removing all the air from the sealed bag is the first way to stop it from floating.

If you don’t, you come to see that alligator clips or bullfrog clips will become your new best friend! You can clip the bag to the side of the water bath device or clip it at the bottom of the bag and weigh it down with a knife by slipping the knife through the handles.

How To Tell If the Carrots Are Done?

I have always read that you can check the tenderness of the carrots by checking it every 5 minutes using a tip of a fork. But that’s assuming you have a sealed bag you can re-seal. Mine are vacuum packed, so this option doesn’t work for me.

The best way, honestly, is trial and error. I followed the recommended cooking temperature and time of my Precision Cooker, and I found that it was perfect for me, so I have never had to re-adjust that time.

Recipe Overview

Flavour/Texture: Crunchy yet tender, sweet yet spicy, these browned sous carrots are surrounded by gooey, sticky sweetness. The hot honey is a drizzle over the sous vide carrots rather than the usual glazed carrots we usually have. It packs a punch, too, as the hot honey truly delivers those spicy notes.

Ease: What I love most about sous vide is the set and forget mode, and it always turns out perfectly. The consistency of the finished product always amazes me, and it truly is fail proof.

The hot honey is a simple simmer, and all you’re doing here is allowing the hot chilli peppers and red pepper flakes to infuse into the honey. Really easy process too.

Time: The cooking is an hour as the sealed bag of carrots are sitting in the water bath, doing its thing. You can go about preparing the rest of the meal during that time.

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you will need to make Sous Vide Carrots with Hot Honey.

Dutch carrots: Sweet Dutch carrots are the best carrots to use for sous vide. Perfect in size, they don’t require much preparation. Not even peeling! You might also like our Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Pearl Couscous and Salad of Dutch Carrots, Hummus and Soft-Boiled Eggs.

Honey: Making hot honey is an easy process that surprisingly yields such bold flavours. Hot in spice and heat, a drizzle of this nectar on any vegetable would be fabulous!

Red chillies: Grab some fresh red chillies or red peppers and cut them up into nice thin matchsticks. It’s up to you which peppers you prefer to use as it depends on how much spice you can handle.

For mild to slightly hot chilli peppers, you can try Coronado, Espanola, Rocotillo or the Numex Joe E. Parker. If you want super-hot, go for the 7-Pot, Caribbean, Dorset Naga and of course the grandmama of them all, Carolina Reaper.

Remember to put some gloves on, or you’ll be stinging for days!

Chilli flakes: Just a little sprinkle of red pepper flakes or chilli flakes. Apart from adding some heat, it gives the honey some texture and enhances the presentation.

Variations and Substitutions

Type of carrot: You can use regular carrots for this side dish. Just cut them in half and then cut them in long strips. You can also use a medley of different coloured heirloom carrots.

Red chilli: You can use any red chillies or red peppers.

Reduce spiciness: To reduce the heat in this recipe, remove the seeds from the red chillies, and you can omit the chilli flakes or red pepper flakes.

Vegan option: For a vegan version, use maple syrup instead. Maple syrup and Dutch carrots are a great match, although you will get more of a butterscotch/caramel flavour.

Butter: Any vegetable oil would work. Alternatively, you can use butter instead for a richer flavour.

Seeds: If you love side dishes with seeds, some roasted white sesame seeds or poppy seeds would work really well.

Nuts: If you like some extra crunch, you can add some nuts. Side dishes with nuts are a really popular option and you try adding crushed pistachios, macadamia and even toasted pine nuts.

Instructions

Step by step instructions for how to make Sous Vide Carrots with Hot Honey.

Cut off the leafy tops and leave 1-2 cm on the top. Remove any root ends.

Give it a quick wash. Pat dry and vacuum seal the Dutch carrots in a bag.

Immerse the sealed bag in a water bath or a large saucepan. Then, using a sous vide immersion cooker, set at 83.9°C or 183°F for 1 hour. Or you can check the website of your immersion cooker brand for the sous vide temperature chart.

Slice the red chillies or red peppers into thin matchsticks.

In a small saucepan, add the honey, red chillies and chilli flakes (red pepper flakes). Let it simmer on low to medium heat for 10 minutes.

In a large fry pan, add 1 tsp of avocado oil. Remove the sous vide carrots from the sealed bag and place in the fry pan. Fry until the carrots have browned. Place on a platter.

Drizzle honey on top. Serve the rest on the side.

Season with salt and pepper.

Serve.

Great Mains for This Side Dish

How to serve Sous Vide Carrots with Hot Honey? Try these great main meal recipes.

This stovetop to oven skillet Potato Frittata recipe is one of the easiest egg dishes you can conveniently make throughout the year. For a fun Cajun dish, there is always this blackened chicken recipe which would work so well with the carrots.

I am always partial to a BBQ meatloaf so I just had to include this delicious recipe. So tasty and flavourful!

Frequently Asked Questions

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If you’re new to sous vide cooking, this is a fantastic recipe for beginners. While most people associate sous vide with making the best piece of steak, I love it for vegetables even more. The level of consistency is simply unbeaten.

Oh, and this hot honey recipe beats those store-bought ones like Mike’s Hot Honey or Trader Joe’s Hot Honey out of the ballpark. Just make your own, and you’ll see how versatile hot honey can be! These are perfect dinner party side dishes or even side dishes for potluck.

That’s all!

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