Roasted carrots polenta is an easy, healthy weeknight dinner meal, which is ready in 30 minutes. Creamy buttery polenta, roasted purple carrots cut à la Hasselback brushed with maple syrup, roasted sweet garlic and granola make a great comfort dish.
I dare to say, that this dish will become one of your favourite meals. Not only because it’s so simple to make, but it also tastes so incredibly delicious. In fact, you’ll find this to be a perfect comfort dish for any time of the year, but especially when the days turn a bit colder.
It is an unusual combination, but it goes great together and it makes an incredible fall dish. Just imagine creamy polenta, caramelized garlic, sweet carrots and crunchy granola. Delicious!
Polenta, garlic and carrots are the ideal companions. Polenta is a golden comfort food, which you can eat with a spoon. That’s like a sign for comfort food. Right? In order to get that extra creamy and rich texture, I cook it with milk and at the end I add some butter to it. Yummy.
Hasselback carrots
But let me go back to the roots. Haha, got it? Roots, carrots? These slightly sweet carrots make a wonderful topping on polenta or rice. They are also a great side dish, served with meat (just like this steak recipe), poultry, fish or other vegetables. You can pick any carrots you like most. Orange, yellow, purple or white carrots, all taste great. Or you can use a mix of them to make your dish even more colourful.
Additionally, I wanted kind of a different look for the carrots. Therefore, I decided, once again, to cut them à la Hasselback. In other words, a fan-shaped cut will transform your dish into a celebration. Check these other Hasselback recipes, for inspiration, as well: festive butternut pumpkin, cute potatoes on coleslaw or zucchini with feta.
Carrots, garlic and polenta are already a great dish. But crunchy granola makes it simply perfect. I made granola myself, but you can buy it in every supermarket. The granola I used is made of almonds, oats, hemp hearts, coconut flakes and honey.
Also, instead of using granola, you can simply toast some almonds, hazelnuts or pine nuts. The important step is to toast them. As a result, you’ll get an elevated nutty flavour, which you are going to love. I promise. Wink.
Ingredients for 2 portions of roasted carrots polenta:
- 180 g dry polenta
- 400 ml water
- 250 ml milk
- a pinch of salt, pepper
- 20-30 g butter
- 5-6 carrots
- olive oil
- 8-10 garlic cloves
- 2 Tbsp of granola
- 2 Tbsp of maple syrup
To begin, preheat the oven to 180°C. Then, wash the carrots, trim them and cut à la Hasselback. Meaning, make crosswise cuts, a couple of millimeters apart, without cutting completely through the carrots.
Carefully lay the cut carrots onto a baking dish and brush them with olive oil. Add the garlic cloves (skin on) and place the dish in the oven for 10 minutes. Then, brush the carrots with maple syrup and roast for 10 more minutes or until the garlic gets tender and the carrots are tender but still with a slight bite.
In the meantime, prepare the polenta. In a pot, add the water and bring it to a boil. Once it starts boiling, stir in the polenta and let it simmer on medium-low for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then, add the milk and simmer for 10 more minutes, stirring frequently. Afterwards season with salt, and pepper and stir in a knob of butter.
Finally, spoon the polenta onto plates, and top it with carrots and roasted garlic. Crunchy granola makes this roasted carrots polenta dish perfect.
Enjoy.
