Taking Inventory: Golden Carrot

There are two easy ways to get a golden carrot, and one extremely difficult one. The easiest is to craft it – grow or steal a regular carrot, then surround it with gold nuggets in a crafting grid. Also pretty easy is to trade three emeralds for three golden carrots with a Master-level farmer villager. The hard way? Go to the Nether, find a Bastion remnant, and go searching in its chests – there’s a small chance you’ll find a golden carrot in there.

Now you’ve got one, what can you do with it? Well, you can eat it – which restores three food markers and 14.4 saturation points, making it one of the most satisfying foods in the game. You can also feed it to horses, donkeys, mules and rabbits. But most usefully, you can brew it with an awkward potion to get yourself a potion of night vision.

You might be wondering why golden carrots make night vision potions. It’s down to an old urban legend that carrots help you see in the dark. This is not actually true – it’s a myth that originates in propaganda put out by the British air force during the Second World War to explain their improved success during night air battles. In reality, it was the use of red lights on instrument panels and improvements in radar technology that were the reasons for the success – but they didn’t want their enemies to know that, so they gave the credit to carrots instead.

Luckily, carrots are still very good for you – they’re packed with vitamins A, K and B6, as well as lots of natural sugars. So add some gold leaf (which is perfectly edible), and you’ve got yourself a home-made golden carrot. Beautiful and tasty. Bon appetit!