A Carrot By Any Other Name (aka Copper Pennies)

Marinated Carrots (aka Copper Pennies)

In our current world, cooking often means making things with what you have on hand or what shows up in your online grocery order. When I went to the beach with my girl friends last month (seems like a year ago now), we all brought foods to share, to make meals easy. Teresa brought marinated carrots. Carol brought a marinated bean salad. I made chicken salad. The carrot dish is a recipe that I had not thought about in years. It was very popular a few decades ago, gracing the table at many family and church dinners. I had forgotten how good this is. And I wanted to share the recipe here as soon as I got home.

But we came home a half step ahead of the virus. I headed to the grocery store very early morning after we got back thinking I needed to do a big shopping because we were not supposed to go out for two weeks. (Yes, they said two weeks at the beginning. That was 5 weeks ago.) I planned to make these carrots and had tomato soup on my list. Already the shelf was bare where tomato soup should have been. But I did buy carrots. As two weeks turned into three, I finally managed to add a couple of cans of tomato soup to my online order. But by there were no carrots to buy. And we had eaten ours. 

After five weeks and two more online grocery orders, I finally had carrots and tomato soup in my possession at the same time. So yesterday I got to make the marinated carrots (which is often called copper pennies) to have in our refrigerator for the next several days.  

The recipe calls for green pepper as it's pictured at the top. I only had a red pepper here yesterday. It tastes the same. And my onion will soften a little as this dish sits in the refrigerator. I looked the recipe up in our old church cookbook and found three versions. All so much alike. One called for mustard. Another called for Worcestershire sauce. The third used both. They all used sugar and vinegar with slight differences in the amounts. One had onions sliced in rings. One said to dice the onion. It's a flexible recipe.

But before I made it I texted Teresa to ask about the mustard/Worcestershire sauce quandary. She promptly texted back and sent me the recipe she used. That's the one I wanted...the one we ate at the beach.

MARINATED CARROTS (aka Copper Pennies)

2 lb carrots, peeled & sliced
1 can tomato soup
1/2 cup cooking oil
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 medium onion, sliced thin (or diced)

Cook carrots in salted water until fork tender. Drain. Add green pepper and onion and set aside too cool.

Combine soup, oil, sugar, vinegar, dry mustard and Worcestershire sauce in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.

Pour dressing over carrots and stir gently. Marinate 6 hours or overnight. Store covered in refrigerator. Serve cold. Will keep up 2 to 3 weeks in refrigerator.

Some of the old recipes call for 2 cans of sliced carrots, drained, instead of slicing and cooking fresh ones. I've eaten it made that way. Not bad. But it's better made with fresh carrots. In this day and time, you can use what you have.


Daddy-O had these for supper last night. He said, "These are really good." Then today at lunch he pulled the dish out of the refrigerator and spooned out a big helping beside his sandwich. This time he said, "These are good. These are really, REALLY good!" And that's all you need to know.