One Cup Of This Sweet And Savory Sauce Takes Roasted Carrots To New Heights

Whether you're on a quest to pack more veggies into your diet or looking for a mouthwatering meat alternative to throw on the grill for your vegan friends, carrots are probably the answer you're looking for. Jam packed with vitamins and fiber, these beautiful orange tubers are earthy and a little sweet. This makes them a decent stand-in for hot dogs or pulled pork or chicken, especially oven roasted glazed carrots draped in butter and seasonings, or (even better) barbecue sauce.

The reason carrots and barbecue sauce go so well together is that carrots can easily skew either savory or sweet; consider classic carrot cake cupcakes with caramelized walnuts versus swapping carrots for potatoes when making homemade fries. Barbecue sauce also usually has both savory and sweet elements, such as brown mustard, aromatic Worcestershire sauce, and liquid smoke mingled with tangy tomato paste and rich brown sugar. Considered this way, draping roasted carrots in zesty barbecue sauce just makes sense.

Slow roasted in sticky, spicy, tangy barbecue sauce, carrots become velvety and tender, absorbing all that gorgeous flavor. The heat also caramelizes both carrots' natural sugars and the sauce's added sugars, and transforms the veg's earthiness into a slightly meaty flavor that's only enhanced by the seasonings in your favorite three-ingredient homemade barbecue sauce. You can even make this dish right on the grill alongside meat-forward options by setting a cast iron skillet on the grates, which will infuse the carrots with tons of smoky flavor as well, so no one has to miss out on their seasonal favorites.

Possibly the best thing about roasting carrots in barbecue sauce are all the ways you can enjoy this combination. Shredded carrots simmered in a particularly smoky sauce are the perfect topping for a grilled chicken fillet or can stand on their own as the main ingredient, especially served on a hearty potato bun and topped with a few buttery pickle slices. Since spicy sauces and pickled carrots are frequently used in banh mis, you could also pull from that flavor profile, topping your barbecued carrots with pickled daikon radish, fresh cucumber slices, and a dollop of mayo.

Whole and baby-style barbecue roasted carrots are also the perfect size and shape to make vegan-friendly hot dogs or lil smokies. For the lil smokies, you can either cut down whole carrots or sort the particularly fat, squat baby carrots from a store-bought bag to mimic the shape of mini hot dogs before roasting them until nice and tender. Mix in some of your favorite sweet and savory baked beans (store-bought and homemade both work) for an herbivore version of franks and beans.

If you love biting into a juicy barbecued sausage sandwich, the carrot version will offer some of the same satisfying texture with loads of flavor. It's also fairly simple to prepare, since you'll be roasting the carrots whole in a shallow pool of barbecue sauce. Just tuck the finished product into a hearty torpedo bun with your favorite toppings. No matter how you eat them, saucy roasted carrots may be just the summer cookout staple you're looking for.