Moroccan Carrot Salad
Carrots boiled just past raw, then dressed hot with cumin, garlic and lemon so they take the flavour right through. Served at room temperature, and better an hour after making.
Photograph credit: Moroccan carrot salad by The Boreka Diary · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Hot carrots take dressing the way hot potatoes do — the cell walls are open and the surface is dry, so the lemon and oil go in rather than sitting on top. Blooming the cumin and paprika in warm oil before they meet the carrots is the other half: ground spice stirred in raw tastes powdery, while thirty seconds in fat releases the oil-soluble aromatics that carry the flavour. The salad then needs an hour, which is when it stops tasting of separate ingredients.
Questions About Moroccan Carrot Salad
How long does Moroccan Carrot Salad take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and 12 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of cooling, so allow 1 hour 27 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.
Moroccan Carrot Salad: Step by Step
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Bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the carrot coins for 6 to 8 minutes, until tender but still with a definite bite. They will soften further in the dressing.
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While they cook, warm the oil in a small pan over a low heat and add the garlic. Cook 1 minute, until fragrant but not coloured.
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Add the cumin, paprika, cinnamon and cayenne and stir for 30 seconds, until the oil turns red and smells strongly of spice. Take off the heat.
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Drain the carrots thoroughly and tip them, still steaming, into a bowl.
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Pour the spiced oil over at once, add the lemon juice, salt and sugar, and toss well.
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Leave to cool to room temperature, about 1 hour, tossing once or twice as it goes.
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Fold through the parsley, coriander and olives, scatter with sesame seeds, and taste for salt and lemon before serving.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Getting Right
- Dress them hot, from the colander. Cold carrots simply will not take it up.
- Do not boil them soft. They keep cooking in the warm dressing.
- It is better after an hour and very good the next day, which makes it useful for a table of small plates.
Ingredient Swaps
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Serve It With
Flatbread and harissa · Grilled lamb or chicken · A plate of other salads
Leftovers and Storage
Refrigerated for 5 days. Bring back to room temperature before serving; fridge-cold mutes the spice.
Moroccan Carrot Salad Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. Sodium is not given, because the salt for the cooking water is in the ingredient list but most of it is poured away with the water, so no figure from the list would be honest. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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