No Waste Tuesday: What To Do With Carrot Greens

In our vegetable garden, we’ve got quite some carrots planted. And as a good gardener, we always gave back the carrot greens to nature and put them in our compost bin. Well, that’s what we thought was the right thing to do.

Until someone showed us the light and converted us into different thinkers. Why can’t you just eat the carrot greens too?

I didn’t know what to do at first. But after a while I found out you can actually make a lovely pesto with it. And so I had to test it and modify it into my own recipe, of course.

I know, I’ve already written an article about carrots and how to make a couple of inspiring different recipes with them.

Are carrot greens edible?!

While doing research I didn’t find any governmental restrictions on eating the carrot tops. They are in general safe for consumption and therefore edible. It must be said though that there were a couple of people on the internet that had some adverse reactions towards eating them.

They are quite rich in Alkaloids and Nitrates, which may cause some effects on people sensitive to it. However, as long as you don’t eat them by the gallon, you’ll be fine. Our body in general has quite a good filter.

And then the good side to it: these green leafy tops are filled with vitamin C, potassium, calcium and phytonutrients. Meaning that it’s full of goodies for your body too! And are also considered to be antioxidants.

So, to say it in short: yes they’re edible, but not in bulk.

What to do with leafy carrot tops?

If you look at the internet you’ll find that you can do a lot of things with these amazing tops. On its own it’s tasting quite bitter, so it’s not really advisable to eat it without any other ingredients added. Or you can blanch them to get the tangibleness out, that’s also possible.

However, when combined with some other ingredients, is the way I prefer them. Especially in my amazing homemade pesto that I do once in a while. It’s absolutely amazing with some pasta. Or even with fried potatoes! Yummy, yummy!

If you want to add them into a salad, you can just add a bit of lemon or vinegar.

So, we can put them into a salad! They’re quite herby, I always feel the taste is a bit in between coriander and parsley. You can basically put them as a herb in whatever you’d like!