Nutrition

Carrots are high in beta-carotene, this is the pigment that gives them the strong orange colour. Enzymes in the body convert beta-carotene into retinol, a form of vitamin A that is essential for eye health.

Shopping Guide

You want a strong orange colour but look out for brown spots on the carrots.

Storage

To store bagged whole carrots, keep in the bag in the fridge for over a week. For bunched carrots, make sure you remove the green tops before storing in the fridge.

Preparation

Carrots are great on their own raw or when roasted, boiled, steamed or stir fired. Try adding a couple to mashed potato for extra flavour and colour or grate them into soups and salads. 

Tom Hunt’s guide to preparing carrots

Kids in the Kitchen

For a younger child, why not help them to grate a couple of carrots? Show them how to do it safely, and you can add the grated carrots to sauces, or even make a side salad for tea by asking them to squeeze the juice from an orange over the grated carrots!

For an older child, it could be a great opportunity to learn some essential knife skills – why not use a couple of carrots to help them learn the claw grip by slicing into rounds?

Find more ideas for involving kids in the kitchen here.

Sensory

Why not use carrots as a way of exploring smell? Try tossing some carrot slices or sticks in a little cinnamon and try taking a bite of a carrot with your nose pinched, and another without. Can you notice the difference? 80% of flavour is actually in the smell, so this is a great way to explore flavour! If your child doesn’t feel up to taking a bite, they could lick instead, or sniff a carrot slice with cinnamon and one without to compare how adding flavouring impacts our experience of veggies.

Watch our video from Ruth Platt for a visual guide to exploring carrots with your senses here. Find more sensory ideas, tips and videos here. If you get stuck and need a little help with describing words, we have a selection for you here, too!

Serving

Next time you make a meal with carrot, try to get your kids involved in small ways wherever you can – when serving it up, why not let your child help you plate it up and add any toppings or make it look as attractive as they can!

Find the best ways of involving your own child and their skills and interests on our Roles for Kids page.

Activities

Why not try making a carrot face mask, a cut-out and colour carrot or carrot crown?

Or grab some of our free games & puzzles with carrots like our Carrot Launcher or Get Over It Carrot game?

Kids more interested in science? If you are just starting out with kitchen science, start small by exploring the different colours of carrots – you can find rainbow bunches of carrots in greengrocers and they can be great fun to explore with kids! If you feel like a more silly DIY-confident science experiment, all you need is a drill, a large carrot and a straw! Watch Stefan Gates’ carrot flute experiment and have a go, it’s a giggle for kids to watch and play!

Find loads more free carrot-themed crafts here and games here.