Foods & cuts · Carrot
Whole carrots
Whole and unpeeled, cooked long and gently rather than fast. Sweet enough to caramelise and dense enough that reaching that point over direct heat means burning the outside first.
What it is
- Form
- Whole vegetable
- Typical weight
- 50–100 g
- Typical thickness
- 20–35 mm
- Cut
- Not a cut of anything
Why it behaves as it does
A carrot is the clearest vegetable case of the conflict the catalogue keeps meeting in meat: the surface reaction people want and the interior state they want happen at different rates, and direct heat widens the gap. Twenty-five millimetres of dense root takes a long time to soften, and a carrot held over direct heat for that long is black. The arrangements that work all reduce the distance or move the heat — halving lengthways to make a flat face, or cooking indirect until tender and finishing over the fire for colour. Skin on is deliberate: it holds the shape and it is where most of the char lands. BBQHQ publishes no time, having no source that covers carrots, and the interior endpoint is a cue rather than a temperature — a knife tip meets no resistance.
When is it done?
Food-safety endpoint
BBQHQ holds no food-safety rule for this food. We are not showing you another jurisdiction’s figure in its place — check your national food-safety authority.
When it goes wrong
- Burnt outside, underdone inside
- Dense whole vegetables never getting tender — 2 distinguishable causes.
- Still raw in the middle
- Dense whole vegetables never getting tender — 2 distinguishable causes.
Also relevant to whole carrots
Afterwards
Cooling, keeping and reheating what is left is general guidance for barbecue leftovers. Neither UK authority publishes anything specific to whole carrots, and BBQHQ does not invent a distinction they do not make.
What we don't know about this
No institutional source has been found that publishes a grilling time for this one. The two extension services behind BBQHQ's other produce timings do not cover it.
What we know we’re missing records what was searched for each of these, and what would settle it.