So, this year, we decided to fully preserve almost all of our carrots from the season using the blanch and freeze technique we often employ. The decision really comes down to having less than optimal storage conditions available to us and our desire to hit at least one year of storage time for preservation.
We seriously underestimated the amount of time it takes to clean, prepare, peel, slice, blanch and package nearly 50 pounds of carrots! It took hours upon hours to get through it all! Honestly, it was the prep that did us in. Actually blanching them was relatively simple. We used every single large bowl we had in the house, more than once!
Sometimes there’s a pretty hefty trade off to preserving foods in matters of time. For us, the motivation has to be significant enough (like, being disappointed when our carrots go limp in 3 months) to put that much work into preservation. We’ve talked about using crop value as a measure of preservation before, but then sometimes there’s just plain and simple motivation.
This is the first time we’ve processed the bulk of our carrots in this way. We’re confident in the preservation technique, but we might explore a blend of refrigeration and blanching in future years just to reduce the overall labor. Or, maybe we’ll find that the effort was worth the reward and just plan on doing this again for our hefty harvest.
What I do know is that I’m really looking forward to making a serious batch of carrot soup with these! This is a wonderful way to use up pounds and pounds of carrots, for a lovely fall themed sweet and savory soul warmer. With snow on the ground, our desire for comfort foods grow by the day!
