Carrot-top Pesto

[dude]

A friend is out of town for a couple of weeks and she offered me her weekly CSA pick-up while she's away.  Heck yeah, free organic veggies!  Anyhow, the carrots in this week's pick-up had beautiful, lush green tops that everyone was pretty much twisting off and leaving in a box for composting.  I thought, "there must be something one can do with those?"  So I kept mine, and when I got home, I found recipes for Carrot-top pesto!  I don't follow recipes when I make normal pesto, so I just used about 1/3 of the basil I'd normally use, and subsituted carrot-tops for the other 2/3.  This stuff is insanely delicious!  I'll never toss those carrot-tops in the composter again.

[TrMama]

Darn, I just tossed a bunch in the composter yesterday!

I did save the radish tops to make Velouté aux Pannes de Radis. Which is just a fancy French way of saying puréed potato soup with radish tops.

[GuitarStv]

I was under the impression that carrot tops can have high concentrations of alkaloids and nitrates (depending on growing conditions) that may cause a bad reaction in some people.

[unix_kung_fu]

I was under the impression that carrot tops can have high concentrations of alkaloids and nitrates (depending on growing conditions) that may cause a bad reaction in some people.

There was a NYT article a while back that suggested carrot greens may be toxic and a lot of people misunderstood it. To my knowledge I'm not aware of anyone ever getting sick from eating a normal amount of carrot greens. I know at least I haven't! :)

[2ndTimer]

Brilliant idea!  I love finding a use for something I would normally throw away. 

2ndTimer