CARROT TOPS!

For the last few weeks, I have been stripping the bushy green carrot tops off of my carrot bunches, admiring their lush greenery, and then sadly relegating them to the trash pile. After my last two ventures into carrot tops (toasted, garlicky green grass and a rather noxious carrot top tea), I had given up altogether on carrot tops, thinking that perhaps there wasn't anything to be done with them. I started brainstorming ways to build a little compost pile on my rooftop...but...

This week was particularly difficult. The purple carrots were so beautiful and the carrot tops were so abundant. I felt remorse and shame as I sliced off the tops and threw them away.

While I was contemplating the sad fate of my carrot tops, I had a suddent guilt-induced flash of insight. Perhaps carrot tops could be used for medicinal purposes? I shuddered a bit, thinking on the carrot top tea/infusion I had tasted earlier, but I figured it was worth a try.

I found a lot of interesting facts about carrots, the history of carrot cultivation, and its various uses through the ages. Did you know the wild carrot is native to Afghanistan, where it was found in its original purple and purple-white hues? There are yellow and black varietals as well, and researchers have managed to create a particularly sweet varietal of purple carrot with an orange core. I wish I could do that for a living - create new varietals of edible plants. Sighhh... if dreams were pennies, I'd be rich.

I found several reports of carrot top and carrot seed infusions (yeck) and extracts being used for detoxification and as a diuretic. Apparently, poultices made from (wild) carrot mash also work as an external antiseptic.

I also stumbled upon a particularly entertaining 2009 NY Times article by Michael Tortorello.

The Toxic Salad (NYT)

Tortorello is more gifted than I. After cooking up some carrot tops, I believe my description of the experience was something along the lines of "garlicky toasted grass" and "interesting." In Tortorello's words, "The immature carrot greens were cheerfully bitter—say, like a $150 million Powerball winner paying his tax bill. If you can’t quite taste that simile on your tongue, here’s another adjective I could use to describe those carrot greens: toxic."

Yeah, basically. Apparently, carrot tops are mildly toxic, given their high alkaloid content. I might be just spreading internet hearsay along, but hey, I believe it. Those things are vile.

I like to read the readers' comments sections sometimes. You get such an interesting view into the lives of the most annoying netizens floating out there. NYT, WSJ, Huff Post all have very different varieties of lurkers, some more obnoxious than others. But there are also a lot of normal people and I will occasionally discover the odd gem here and there. Especially when I read inoffensive niche articles, like this one. After all, no matter how determined the would-be political commentator, it is difficult to connect leftover vegetable tops with the varying obstacles our country faces from the pernicious effects of greedy, no-good (fill in your politician or minority group of choice here - Romney, Obama, bankers, and politicans as a general group seem to be particularly popular choices these days).

I digress. While I was sifting through comments that had been posted and forgotten several years ago, I discovered quite a few interesting and useful things. I felt like a packrat, successfully scavenging scraps that would prove useful someday, perhaps.

- Rhubarb leaves are toxic.
- Parsnip sap and sunlight are a dangerous combination for your skin. The two together can cause serious blisters and rashes. Yikes!
- A nice reminder that tomato plants are toxic, except the fruit. In fact, all parts of the nightshade plants are usually toxic, with a few exceptions.
- Another nice reminder that the carrot/parsnip family is very dangerous for the unaware forager. Deadly water hemlock is all too tragically mistaken for wild parsnip or wild carrot - even a bite is fatally toxic to children (and adults).
- Rabbits like carrot tops, sometimes. So do goats, apparently.

Of course, this being the comments section, even if it is the comments section of a top notch paper with a fairly respectable readership, it is wise to take all these comments with a healthy grain or two of salt.

But anecdotal evidence is sometimes oh-so-helpful in ways that dry facts simply are not. One woman, after reading the article, exclaimed that in France, carrot tops are sold by the bunch in farmers' markets for making an excellent soup stock. Is this true? Who knows? But oh, how brilliant!

I should have thought of this. The lady casually mentions freezing large bunches of carrot greens for winter soup making purposes and I can't help but smack myself over the head for disposing of my poor carrot greens. I knew there was a good use for them.

I prefer eating my carrots raw, most of the time. Occasionally, I might roast them. But I don't like wasting them in soup, since I find the raw version ever so much tastier than the cooked version. I do like the flavor that they infuse into the broth though. And that, exactly, is what carrot tops are useful for. I can make lovely, carrot flavored soup stock without sacrificing my carrot snacking habit. Why, oh why, didn't I think of this before...?

Well, now I know. And fortunately, carrots are not a summer vegetable, like the tomato or the eggplant, so perhaps we'll be getting a few more bunches in the next few CSA shares. Thinking of carrot tops as herbs, like parsley or dill, makes a world of difference. After all, you wouldn't want to cook a dish of sauteed parsley, but you certainly would throw a handful into a soup pot. (At least, I would.) Prepared and armed with my newfound knowledge, I am ready to tackle these carrot tops again.

Please, don't doubt. I know this will work. After all, third time's the charm!


Afterthought: I think I know why every culture has soup in one form or another. And I know why every culture has it's own version of "buddaejjigae," which is essentially a mashup of anything and everything available to Koreans during the civil war (popular ingredients include ramen noodles, sour kimchi, random veggies, cheese, spam, or pasta). All ingredients are optional and can be used in any order.

Soup is just the most forgiving food to make (and one of the most economical and healthy too!)

Leftover vegetables bits (carrot tops, onion and potato peelings), the aesthetically displeasing, the odds and ends of an animal carcass (bones, gristle, tendons, innards, skin, bits of extra meat and fat), the excess herbs - they all make lovely additions to the soup pot and can be added in any whatever quantity is available. Even the strongest herbs, like cilantro or dill, can be thrown by the handful into soup, where their flavors will soften and commingle with the other ingredients, producing a flavorful but not overwhelming soup base.

Soup! How versatile you are!

This is turning into an ode to soup. I'll stop here.