Ulog 46: Dehydrating Carrots For The Pantry

Preserving Carrots For Later

Last week I was able to get my hands on some free carrots; not very much just a few one-pound bag of baby carrots from my local grocery store. And since we don't eat carrots too often I figured I needed a way to preserve them for future recipes.

Our carrot eating menu is such a small amount that even this little bag of baby carrots would probably go bad before we had a chance to use them.

But I do like to use shredded carrots in recipe (ie. soups, stews, coleslaw) and, after all, the one-pound bag was free. So who am I to pass up something that is free.

I read up on some recipe and homesteading websites about how to dehydrate carrots and got mixed reviews of whether to blanch or not to blanch before placing the carrots on the dehydrator. I chose NOT to blanch.

Ran the un-blanched baby carrots through my mini food processor until they were shredded (on the left). Then spread them out onto my prepared dehydrator sheets; trying to keep big clumps to a minimum for easier drying.

As the dehydrating process went on, I would remove the shredded carrots that were dry enough, then spread out the ones that needed more time or were too clumped together. The total time for dehydrating was about 4 hours total. I started with three trays in the dehydrator and ended up combining the carrots down to one by the time it was finished.

So now I have a pint jar almost completely full of dehydrated (shredded) carrots to add to recipes in the future. No waste of buying an entire bag only to use a few at a time. I can measure out how much I need and know I'll have more for the next time.

My mom also got a bag of the carrots for the freebie coupon and is giving me hers as well. I'll be doing the same with her bag as I want to have a nice stash on hand; plus I want to make some vegetable broth mix with my other herbs and vegetables (celery, spinach, etc) that I've been dehydrating over the last few months.

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