baby carrot

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪbi ˈkæɹət/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪbi ˈkæɹət/, /ˈbeɪbi ˈkɛɹət/, /ˈbeɪbi ˈkɛəɹət/

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• Hyphenation: ba‧by car‧rot

baby carrot (plural baby carrots)

1. A carrot harvested and sold when immature and of a small size.
   • 1916 September, T. J. Newbill, “Canning Vegetables by the Cold-pack Process”, in Monthly Bulletin, volume 4, number 6, Puyallup, Wash.: Western Washington Experiment Station, page 334:

     The baby carrots and the little rosebud beets which are being thinned out of the garden should be canned at the present time.

   • 1944 March, Georgian Adams, Sybil L. Smith, Experiment Station Research on the Vitamin Content and the Preservation of Foods (United States Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication; no. 536), Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, →OCLC, page 8:

     Harvested as baby carrots, these varieties, planted early in the season, averaged 74 micrograms of carotene per gram of sample (range by varieties, 70 to 85 micrograms); corresponding samples harvested as mature carrots of at least 2 inches crown diameter averaged 180 micrograms per gram (range, 146 to 255).

   • 2015, Jacques Pépin, “Vegetables”, in Heart & Soul in the Kitchen, Boston, Mass.: Rux Martin Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 347:

     A baby carrot is okay, but a carrot that is allowed to reach the peak of maturity is going to be sweeter and full of flavor—provided it hasn't become too old.

2. A small finger-shaped piece of carrot cut from a full-sized carrot.
   • 2007, Philip W. Simon et al., “Carrot”, in Jaime Prohens, Fernando Nuez, editors, Vegetables II: Fabaceae, Liliaceae, Solanaceae, and Umbelliferae (Handbook of Plant Breeding), New York, N.Y.: Springer, →ISBN, page 333:

     The California carrot production industry developed a high value "cut and peel" or "baby" carrot product using higher quality, more slender 'Imperator' type hybrids that was immensely popular at retail.

   • 2008, Linda Larsen, “Side Dishes”, in The Everything Food Allergy Cookbook: Prepare Easy-to-make meals—without Nuts, Milk, Wheat, Eggs, Fish or Soy, Avon, Mass.: Adams Media, →ISBN, page 253:

     Baby carrots aren't just ordinary carrots cut down to size. […] They are made from a special variety of carrot that is cut down to the baby carrot size. They're delicious eaten cooked or raw.

   • 2009, Ellen Lupton, Julia Lupton, “Mommy, Where Do Baby Carrots Come From?”, in Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Griffin, →ISBN:

     The baby carrot as we know it is the brainchild of California farmer Mike Yurosek. Watching as much as 70 percent of his carrot crop go into the waste heap of his Bakersfield packing plant, Yurosek figured out how to factory-whittle the ungainly rejects into the orange missiles that we now call "baby carrots". […] Presto—the Baby Carrot, which now dominates supermarket carrot sales. Its arrival has cut down agricultural waste, but it has added more packaging, along with extra cost to the consumer. Baby carrots like to congregate in children's lunch boxes—where, however, they are often delivered stillborn straight to the trash.

   • 2015, Joel S. Denker, “Carrot: The Carrot Purple”, in The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 66:

     Mike Yurosek, a California farmer, revolutionized the industry by dreaming up the "baby carrot" idea. […] By 1989, Yurosek had built a mechanized operation to turn out his product. Marketed as baby carrots, the miniatures are not young vegetables at all. "They're grown-up carrots cut up into two-inch sections, pumped through water-filled pipes into whirling cement-mixer-size peelers, and whittled down to the niblets Americans know, love, and scarf down by the bagful," journalist Elizabeth Weise writes.

The term baby-cut carrot is sometimes used for the second sense, especially to distinguish it from the first sense.