Crockpot Carrots, served with Cinnamon Glaze

At a glance

What stands out: Sweet and gently spiced, these crockpot glazed carrots are reliable for holidays, entertaining, or weeknight dinners. The carrots are rich, nutritious, and so straightforward to mix!

How long it takes: 10 minutes to prep, 3 hours to cook
Equipment you’ll need: slow cooker
Servings: 12

Straightforward Crockpot Carrots

Universally loved. Cooked carrots seem to be one of the vegetables that most people like. Even picky eaters enjoy carrots because of their inherent sweetness. Carrots can be served with most any kind of meat. Try carrots with meatloaf, or baked chicken, grilled salmon, or steak.

Always available. Carrots are inexpensive, always in season, and keep well in the fridge for a couple of weeks, so you can always have them on hand. Carrots are also nutritious.

Make them ahead. We like that you can get these carrots cooking ahead of time. Just peel and slice the carrots, add the butter, sugar, and seasonings, cover, and ignore for the next few hours. While you could cook carrots in a similar fashion on the stove top, the beauty of this recipe is that you can put everything into the crockpot hours ahead and just let them cook, hands off, while you’re busy doing other stuff.

Versatile. Slow cooker glazed carrots are fancy enough for special occasions and straightforward enough for everyday cooking. We make them with melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. However, this recipe is so basic you could add almost anything you like to it to make it your own. Keep reading for ideas.

Can you use baby carrots?

While baby carrots are convenient and can be used in this recipe, we find that whole carrots, peeled and sliced, have far better flavor, especially organic carrots. We don’t always buy organic but we have found that organic carrots generally taste better.

Straightforward Recipe Variations

• Instead of butter: Use extra virgin olive oil, ghee, or even just a bit of water, if you want to cut out the fat.
• Try different sweeteners. Use dark brown sugar to step up the flavor a bit, or a add a tablespoon of molasses. Make slow cooker maple glazed carrots by substituting maple syrup for the brown sugar. We also love a drizzle of honey to enhance the flavor of the carrots. White sugar would work in a pinch, as well.
• Be creative with spices. We use cinnamon and nutmeg, but other warm spices like cardamom, ginger, clove, and allspice would work well, too. A teaspoon of vanilla extract would be tasty, too.
• Go savory. Add a little heat with ground cayenne or red pepper flakes. Make slow cooker garlic carrots by adding a bit of minced garlic or garlic powder instead of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
• Adjust yield. This recipe can easily be doubled or halved. Just adjust the ingredients accordingly. Cooking time will be about the same.

Make Ahead Tips

Prep the carrots. Peel the carrots ahead of time, even the day before, if you have extra time. Peel, wash, and slice the carrots, and put them into a covered bowl or zip top bag.

Make ahead to serve later. These crockpot carrots are great reheated. You could cook them a day or two ahead, and gently reheat them when you’re ready to serve.

Keeping leftovers

Refrigerate: Cooked carrots can be refrigerated in a covered container for up to 4 days.

Freeze: You can freeze cooked carrots but they lose texture, and get a little mushy and watery.

Reheat: Gently warm the carrots in a large frying pan or sauce pan when you’re ready to serve them. Reheat, small amounts, covered, in your microwave in a microwave safe container, until warmed through, or put larger amounts back into the crockpot for an hour or so.

• Yield: 12
• Prep: 10 minutes
• Cook: 3 hours
• Total: 3 hours 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 3 pounds carrots
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
• ¼ cup packed brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt

Method

1. Peel, rinse, and slice carrots into ½-inch slices. We like to slice them diagonally for more visual appeal. Place sliced carrots into slow cooker.
2. In a small bowl, mix together melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Pour mixture over carrots in slow cooker and mix, coating the carrots.
3. Cook on High setting for 3 hours,or Low for 6 or 7 hours, or until carrots are fork tender.

Notes

Using baby carrots: While baby carrots are convenient and can be used in this recipe, we find that whole carrots, peeled and sliced, have far better flavor.

Adjust yield. This recipe can easily be doubled or halved. Just adjust the ingredients accordingly. Cooking time will be about the same.