Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots

Brown-sugar glazed carrots make a great fall potluck dish. Every time I take them to a get-together, people rave. If they only knew how embarrassingly simple the dish was. Three ingredients -- carrots, brown sugar, and butter, plus a little salt and pepper are all it takes. You may be thinking what is a dietitian doing adding brown sugar and butter to a perfectly good vegetable? Well, the little flavor  that sugar and butter add can get non-veggie lovers to eat vegetables. And that's a good thing. Carrots are packed with vitamin A, are low in calories, and have fiber to keep you feeling full. The extras add less than a teaspoon of sugar and fat to each serving and one serving provides over 100% of your daily vitamin A needs.

​Grab some carrots and give them a scrub. One of my favorite kitchen gadgets is a vegetable scrubber. With fresh carrots from the garden I don't even need to peel the carrots if I scrub them. Sometimes if the carrots are from the grocery I need to peel them.

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​Slice the carrots really thin. I like to use a food processor with the slicing blade to get them ultra thin. And I can do a bunch quickly in the food processor. You can also dice, julienne, or cube the carrots if you want.

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Toss the carrots into a pan and add some water, not too much you don't want any nutrients leaching into water you'll be tossing out. You can always save the cooking water and put in soups or gravies. This is a great trick any time you cook vegetables in water. Cook until the carrots are crisp-tender.

Now make the embarrassingly simple glaze. Put some butter and brown sugar in pan. Stir over heat until combined. That's it -- two ingredients melted together. Simple, yet delicious.

Toss the cooked carrots in with glaze and add a little salt and pepper to taste.

Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots (serves 4)

3/4 to 1 pound carrots (about 2 cups sliced)
1 Tbs butter
​1 Tbs brown sugar
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Slice carrots thinly (carrots can also be diced, cubed, or julienned)
2. ​Boil a small amount of water, add carrots, cook until crisp tender. Drain carrots and remove from pan.
3. ​Place butter and brown sugar in pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring until combined
4. ​Add carrots back to pan with glaze. Cook 1-2 more minutes until glaze adheres to carrots.
5. ​Add salt and pepper to taste.