I would like to make glazed carrots, which I usually make with butter, but I need them to be non-dairy.
How necessary is it to replace the butter? Obviously the delicious buttery flavor will be gone, but as far as the recipe functioning, is it required? What would I replace it with? Would a couple drops of imitation butter flavor be terrible or help?
Just did a quick google search on vegan glazed carrots and there are lots of tasty looking options. Some suggest soy margarine. I haven’t tried it so I don’t know how well it would work. This one looks particularly tasty ginger orange glazed carrots.
Yeah, as much as I don’t like going that route, I probably would use something like Earth Balance’s butter substitute (which I believe is a type of soy margarine.)
My go to glazed carrots recipe:
Put chopped carrots in a pot
barely cover with chicken broth
add 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil
boil until liquid is almost entirely gone
Enjoy the best carrots of your life!
Sicks Ate, do they have to be vegetarian/vegan? Oh, you’re not the one who started a similar thread, my bad. Anyway, “orange juice” was the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread title. I’ve had 'em done that way, and I will say this: casually let people know. You can’t tell that there’s an unusual new flavor enhancement by the color or anything, and it’s … disconcerting if you’re not expecting it.
Adding ginger sounds like a great idea!
All good suggestions, it hadn’t occurred to me that they will technically be vegan. They don’t have to be, just can’t have milk products.
I think I will definitely use the OJ and ginger. We’ll see how they go over with a 3 y.o and a 7 y/o! I’ll try the classic brown sugar with soy margarine another time, ditto the chicken broth. I see a lot of carrots in my future 
In trying to makes things Kosher for Mrs. Plant v.2.0 I usually substituted olive oil for butter.
Duck fat is a lovely substitute for butter, if you can find it (or have time to roast a duck).
That sounds more like braised carrots to me. I always thought glazed carrots were supposed to be made with a sweet glaze of some sort, either brown sugar, regular sugar, honey, that sort of thing.
I hate glazed carrots. Braised carrots, I love.
Maybe my taste buds are not as sensitive as others, but I use Olivio for everything. To me it tastes just like butter but it’s made from olive oil.
Vegetable oil, salt and just the barest smidgen of MSG (Accent) make a passable melted butter flavored vegan food product. Cheap olive oil works, too, but the “good” stuff has all those high-falutin’ fruity olivey notes that mess with the buttah flavah.
Meh, they end up glazed with a wonderful savory coating so I call them glazed carrots. The glaze ends up much more reduced than anything I would call braised.
Of course, I’m not a chef (nor an actor, but I do play one on TV) so my usage of terms could be completely off.
I’ve made some fantastic glazed carrots with ginger ale.
You play an actor on TV?
Is this one of those reality things?
It works fine. There was a stretch after our son was born that my wife was convinced that eating dairy products was causing our son colic through the breast milk, so we cut out all dairy in stuff that we ate jointly.
Glazed carrots with that Earth’s Balance vegan stuff were just fine. Not necessarily as awesome as if we’d used some sort of spiffy French Normandy butter, but still pretty great.
When you’re using olive oil, the goal isn’t to make something that tastes buttery, but to make something that tastes as good as butter, while still being different from it. Almost any context where butter is good, olive oil will be good too, but still different.
If you like those, you should also give Marcella Hazan’s braised carrots a try, too. They’re not going to have the meatiness that chicken stock adds, but for pure, concentrated cooked carrot goodness, this dish is unbelievable. I never knew carrots could taste so good. Takes about an hour to hour and a half (or a little more) to finish, though.
I made gingered bourbon carrots once. They were delicious. I used Earth Balance, honey, ginger powder and, of course, bourbon. I didn’t use a recipe, though, and it was a couple years ago so I don’t remember the proportions. I think glazed carrots is one of those things that’s really kinda hard to totally screw up and generally tastes good as long as you don’t burn it.
Be careful with margarines: some have dairy added for buttery taste. When I’m cooking nondairy for my kosher parents I have to read margarine labels very carefully.
If you have Earth Balance (not Smart Balance) available near you, it’s a great go-to for those who don’t want dairy or hydrogenated oils. It’s nice to have a brand I can just grab and not have to read labels any more.