Grilled Carrots Recipe

This recipe for grilled carrots with rustic pesto is a fantastic side dish for a barbecue. It is rich and filling, fresh and delicate at the same time. And it goes perfectly with most things, whether you prefer meat or vegetables on the grill. We especially recommend serving the salad with a grilled lamb culotte. The salad also goes well with a grilled salad with squash and corn, a sourdough bread with garlic butter and aioli. 

TIP: Other good summer salads are cabbage salad with apples and watermelon salad with feta

Salad with baked or grilled carrots

Carrots are something that you almost always have in your fridge. At the same time, they are a good, cheap and versatile ingredient that is in season all year round and can be eaten raw or cooked. In soup, cake, buns or risotto. Or just as crispy carrot sticks as a snack. It is really only your imagination that sets the limits to the many ways of using them. However, we can definitely recommend carrots that are baked in the oven - or even better: cooked on the grill! This way the sweet taste of the carrots is emphasized, and their exterior becomes flavorful, golden and almost slightly caramelized. As I said, for this salad, we prefer to grill the carrots, but you can also bake them in the oven. We can also recommend that you take a look at these delicious recipes with baked carrots for inspiration:

• Pasta salad with baked carrots
• Salad with baked carrots, feta and salted almonds
• Hummus dish with baked carrots and halloumi

Rustic carrot top pesto

For the pesto we use a mixture of basil and carrot tops. That is, the green tops from the carrots that are often still on when you buy carrots in the summer. The tops should be completely fresh and tender, and you should only use the outermost green leaves. They have the most delicious flavor and are not too coarse in texture. If you buy carrots without tops, you can easily make a rustic pesto of basil alone (just use double the amount), or you can replace the carrot tops with parsley or other herbs. You can also be inspired by other good versions of green pesto in this blog post with our best recipe for green pesto.