One of the problems with carrots is getting the flavor balance right. When you roast them, they get small and dry; when you boil them, they stay large but lose flavor. Steaming would take hours. Frying them is another post. So how do you get carrots with a nice glaze?
The trick to a good glaze is this: start with already-reduced ingredients. What do I mean by reduced? I mean ingredients that have already had some of their liquid content removed. Standard maple syrup has had a fair amount of liquid boiled off. So has frozen concentrated orange juice.
Get your carrots and boil them. You may have bought pre-cut skinned carrots, you may have bought whole carrots, skinned them and cut them up. That doesn't matter. Boil them until they're slightly soft, soft enough that you can stick a fork in it without worrying about rolling your carrot. Drain them, then add two parts frozen concentrated orange juice to one part maple syrup, enough to have a glaze. The orange juice doesn't need to still be frozen, but it should still be a concentrate. I suggest adding some ground cinnamon and either some good fresh grated ginger or some powdered ginger as well, to add some extra flavor. Put this in the oven you're using to reheat your food for Thanksgiving, which is probably at 325-350ºF for some 10-20 minutes. Add some butter if you want, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
Serve them up hot. If your guests marvel at how exotic a dish it is and how difficult it must have been to glaze the carrots, just smile and say, "It was simple, really."
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