Grilling 101 for Newbies 2016: Grilled Carrots with Sage Garlic Butter

C – On this episode of Chopped: the Be Mindful. Be Human. Edition …

Jim has been buying all of these ingredients and suggesting I should do something with them. Not amused. But, I accept this challenge. Sometimes, his eyes are bigger than his stomach … I will waste nothing. That’s a goal, anyway.

He is still buying a lot of things. Sometimes, it goes to waste if we don’t eat or get to it fast enough.

This time he got these beautiful, multi-colored carrots. He suggested grilling them when we grilled all the meats. I thought we needed to do more than just grill them.

It sounded boring and probably be the thing we ended up throwing away because it would be the least flavorful or interesting. I mean, we are grilling some flavorful stuff. I needed to do something more.

When we started thinking about what we had, we thought about the abundance of sage in the garden. It’s a huge bush now. I love it. It’s the most amazing sage bush that is about 4 years old now. We never have to buy sage in the Summer. This dish isn’t quite a Summer dish. More like Fall flavors, but I am using all the things I have.

Grilled carrots are great, especially with sage garlic butter. Honestly, what isn’t good with a healthy drizzle of butter? The carrots are sweet and tender with at nice smokey char. The sages is has an Earthy herb taste that combines well with the sweet butter and garlic taste with a hint of spice.

These carrots were perfect with the pork chops we grilled. I added sage chips that we crisped up when we made sage-infused oil to drizzle on top of the pork chops.

It made the pork chops over-the-top delicious. I am not wasting those delicious sage chips.

Grilling 101 for Newbies 2016: Grilled Carrots with Sage Garlic Butter
Recipe type: Sides
Author:
Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 10 mins
Total time: 30 mins
Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • 1 pound multicolor carrots, peeled
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 cup plus 1 Tbsp Canola or grapeseed oil
  • 1 bunch fresh sage
  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • A pinch of red chili flakes
Instructions
  1. Prepare grill on high heat.
  2. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of oil over the carrots and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
  3. In a sauce pan, place 1 cup of oil and ⅓ of the sage leaves into the pan. Bring it to a simmer, then let steep on low until the sage leaves are crispy. Be careful not to burn them. It took about 30 minutes for us to infuse sage into the oil. Remove the sage leaves from the pan and drain them on a paper towel. You can taste the oil to see if there is a sage taste to it. Set aside.
  4. Chop another ⅓ of the sage leaves.
  5. In another sauce pan, add butter and melt on medium heat. Add garlic, chili flakes, the chopped sage leaves, salt a and pepper to taste. Keep warm or reheat once the carrots are ready to serve.
  6. Place carrots on the hot grill. Brush the carrots with the sage oil using the remaining ⅓ of the sage leaves. Be careful not to burn yourself, as the oil may cause flare ups from the grill. Rotate the carrots to create char marks on all sides. Once the char marks are created move carrots to a cooler spot on the grill to allow the carrots to cook through. Carrots will be done once they are flexible. The smaller ones will cook faster than larger ones. It took about 5 to 8 minutes for all of the carrots to cook through.
  7. Place the carrots on a serving platter. Drizzle the sage garlic butter over top.
  8. Serve.
  9. Enjoy!

 

Simple carrots became something amazing.

I think this was a successful Chopped: the Be Mindful. Be Human. Edition.