Carrots. Hard.

[NeverRTFT]

I am making a lamb curry with carrots in the curry.
I sliced them quite thick. Sauté for about 15 min. Then in with the tinned tomatoes and spices and marinaded meat and simmered for over half an hour.
Meat is cooked perfectly.
Carrots are still hard. Why? How??

Maybe because they’re quite thick?

I pretty much always grate carrot into this sort of sauce, or do thinly sliced half moons.

I’ve found that carrots generally need quite rapid boiling to get nicely soft, unless they’re going to simmer for quite a long time like at least an hour or two.

Vegetables cook particularly slowly in thick liquid like tinned tomatoes. Not sure why.

I had this problem and read that when you put root veg in acidic sauces like tomato it stops the cooking process. It took me a few times to realise this even when chopped into little pieces. You need to pre cook the carrots. I tried cooking them for an hour once in the sauce and it made no difference, still hard. Google the sciencey bit behind it!

@LittleCatDog

I had this problem and read that when you put root veg in acidic sauces like tomato it stops the cooking process. It took me a few times to realise this even when chopped into little pieces. You need to pre cook the carrots. I tried cooking them for an hour once in the sauce and it made no difference, still hard. Google the sciencey bit behind it!

Ohhhhhh! Thanks 😊

@LittleCatDog

I had this problem and read that when you put root veg in acidic sauces like tomato it stops the cooking process. It took me a few times to realise this even when chopped into little pieces. You need to pre cook the carrots. I tried cooking them for an hour once in the sauce and it made no difference, still hard. Google the sciencey bit behind it!

I never knew that. Thank you for this snippet of information.

I make a lot of curries, and have never cooked meat and carrots together in a curry.

If it’s not being slow cooked I usually just simmer for a few minutes before adding to the main dish. Same thing works for sweet potato.

Par boil them

It's the acid in the sauce 😁 When you add something like tomatoes, carrots essentially stop cooking sue to the acid levels.

You have to par-boil!

You don't need to parboil them.

You were correct to sauté them but as they were thickly sliced, 15 minutes was too short a time.

You should have diced them quite finely. Then sauté with onion, garlic if using, for 8 - 10 minutes until soft.

when you put root veg in acidic sauces like tomato it stops the cooking process. It took me a few times to realise this even when chopped into little pieces. You need to pre cook the carrots.

This is correct but OP didn't put the carrots directly into the sauce. She sautéed them first, correctly, but they were just sliced too thickly.

I cheat with these kinds of recipes and stick tinned ones in. They are not nice in their own, but in another recipe they are fine.

Yes but OP wanted the carrots to be chunky, clearly, otherwise wouldn’t she have cut them smaller...

Anyway OP if you like the carrots chunky then next time you can just sauté them for longer.

@EarringsandLipstick ah you're right I didn't spot that she'd sautéd.