Most of us buy our carrots in bags with the green tops removed. Carrots with the greens still intact are not as widely available as carrots with the greens removed. However, you may sometimes find them available. Are carrot greens edible. Yes! They are perfectly edible. Carrot greens are eaten in many countries but not in U.S. It’s unfortunate that we don’t commonly eat the green leafy carrot tops in the U.S. because they are nutritious, and tasty. Why don’t we Americans eat them?
There are two main reasons green carrot tops are not eaten or used for cooking often in the United States. The first reason is that most people think they are not edible and in the past people even thought they were poisonous. But the biggest reason for not eating carrot tops is that they do not fit the way we shop for food, most of the time.
Carrot greens do not keep well and wilt very quickly so you have to use them pretty much the day you purchase the carrots with the green tops on them. For most Americans, this just doesn’t work well meaning the market for fresh carrots with the green leaves intact is not large and shipping and keeping them is not economically feasible. They have to be grown and purchased locally. This is why they are harder to find than carrots without greens which can be stored longer, shipped further, and sold later.
If you do buy carrots with the greens, you have to remove the greens immediately or they will draw moisture from the carrot roots (the part that we eat). This means you have to use the greens even if you don’t want to use the carrots.
Fortunately, you cant cut off the fresh greens and store them in a plastic storage bag in the freezer for later use.
What Do Carrot Greens Taste Like?
Carrot tops taste a lot like parsley mixed with carrots, with some bitterness. You may not notice the carrot taste at first but it’s there. This makes sense as they are in the parsley family, or Apiaceae. Not all the family members taste the same, of course. Here are some other carrot relatives:
- anise
- celery
- chervil
- coriander / cilantro
- cumin
- dill
- fennel
- lovage
- cow
- parsley
- parsnip
Not all members of the parsley family are culinary delights! This group also contains some bummers like giant hogweed, a phototoxic plant that you may have heard of if you’re a Walking Dead fan. It’s the plant that Negan pointed out growing out of the zombie’s bodies. The stuff that made Father Gabriel go blind temporarily and lose his sight in one eye. This effect was slightly exaggerated, of course. Other members of the family are quite poisonous, like poison hemlock, water hemlock, spotted cowbane, fool’s parsley and others.
Perhaps an association with these poisonous brethren contributed to the belief that carrot greens are poisonous. While they do contain alkaloids that could be harmful if consumed in outrageous quantiles, this is true of many other edible leafy greens.
What Can You Do With Carrot Tops?
Since carrot greens taste like parsley, you can use them like parsley. They can be used to make a pesto, either alone or sharing the bill with basil (I prefer half parsley and half basil pesto). They can also be used as a garnish like parsley if you find yourself stuck in the 1980s with a surplus of carrot greens.
Carrot tops also can be eaten raw in salads and put in soups for a bit of fresh brightness and added nutrition.
Another great idea is to use carrot tops along with roasted carrots to utilize the entire vegetable. You can make a carrot top pesto and drizzle it over roasted carrots, like in this Maple-Roasted Carrots with Carrot-Top Pesto recipe. Here are some other ideas for carrot tops.
Celery leaves are also edible and can be used to eat raw or in cooking. They may be slightly bitter compared to the stalks but often have a good flavor, tasting like a sharper, peppery, celery stalk. The outer darker leaves, if those are intact, can be quite bitter sometimes but the inner lighter colored leaves are just fine. Since all the leaves are perfectly safe and nutritious, a cook can do a quick raw taste test to find out if any of the leaves are too bitter to use. I use them all the time but I sometimes have to discard some other dark leaves that are too bitter for my purposes. Sometimes I just eat them while I’m cooking because I like bitter greens anyway. There is no good reason not to eat and use the leaves for cooking when applicable. It’s just a cultural practice to only use the stalks.
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