Carrot Day, Twenty Pounds a Head

A full day's tasting menu engineered to land a genuine twenty pounds of carrot in every guest, six courses deep from breakfast juice to a midnight carrot cake shake. The channel-bored, miso-glazed carrot from round one returns scaled up to steak size as the main event, with every other course built to keep pace around it.

Serves 4 · as served on Bluesky ↗

Twenty pounds a man means we're not cooking a side dish, we're staging a whole day around one vegetable, so I laid it out the way my wife plans Thanksgiving — in courses, so nobody's still working through raw carrot by two in the afternoon. We start easy with a juice, climb through candied ribbons and a carrot dog that holds its own against a real one, hit a noodle bowl built on carrot broth for the midday lull, and then bring out the main event: that same channel-bored, miso-glazed trick from round one, just scaled up to steak-sized planks because eighty pounds of carrot needs a centerpiece that can carry the room. We land soft on a carrot cake milkshake so the day ends sweet instead of just tired. Pace is the whole game here — you don't sprint twenty pounds, you walk it, plate by plate.

Ingredients

Fresh

• 80 lb carrots (20 lb per person, scrubbed, tops reserved)
• 1 piece ginger (4-inch knob, sliced)
• 8 clove garlic (smashed, divided)

Fridge

• 1 lb butter (divided)
• 8 oz cream cheese (softened)
• 1 cup orange juice (divided)

Freezer

• 2 quart vanilla ice cream (softened)

Pantry

• 2 cup olive oil (divided)
• 1 cup brown sugar (divided)
• 12 piece hot dog buns (split-top)
• 4 pack ramen noodles (dried, seasoning packets discarded)
• ½ cup soy sauce (divided)
• ¼ cup rice vinegar
• 1 cup walnuts (toasted, divided)
• 3 tbsp white miso paste

Spice rack

• salt (to taste)
• black pepper (to taste)
• 2 tbsp cumin seeds (toasted)
• 2 tsp cinnamon (divided)

Directions

1. Scrub and trim all carrots, snapping off and reserving the tops, and lay the full eighty pounds out across every counter and cutting board you've got — today isn't a recipe, it's a shift.
2. Run twelve pounds of the carrots through the juicer, stir in half the orange juice and a pinch of salt, and pour it into jars — that's breakfast, drink it standing up because there's five more courses coming.
3. Peel another eight pounds of carrots into wide ribbons with a vegetable peeler, then toast them in a skillet with a quarter of the butter, half the brown sugar and half the cinnamon until they curl up sticky and caramelized, about 6 minutes. ⏱ 6 min
4. Simmer sixteen pounds of slim, whole carrots in water with half the soy sauce and half the garlic for 10 minutes until just tender, then drain, brush with half the olive oil, char them hard on the grill, and tuck each one into a hot dog buns with a crack of black pepper — these go fast, make more buns than you think you need. ⏱ 10 min
5. Simmer the carrot peels and scraps with twelve more pounds of chopped carrots, the whole ginger, the remaining garlic, the rest of the soy sauce and the rice vinegar for 20 minutes to build a broth, strain it, then cook the ramen noodles right in it. ⏱ 20 min
6. Cut the remaining thick carrots into steak-sized planks and bore a channel down the center of each one, same trick as round one — sear the planks hard, then whisk the last of the butter with the white miso paste and the remaining brown sugar, pipe that glaze straight down into the bored channel, and top with the toasted walnuts and cumin seeds. ⏱ 8 min
7. Blend the last eight pounds of carrots with the vanilla ice cream, the cream cheese, the last of the cinnamon and the rest of the walnuts until thick, and pour it into the biggest cups you own — this is dessert, and also, functionally, dinner.
8. Set every course out at once down the length of the table — juice, ribbons, dogs, ramen, steaks and shakes — scatter the reserved carrot tops over the whole spread for color, and don't sit down until every plate on that table is some shade of orange.

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