It’s that time of the season, we pulled our entire carrot harvest! We do things a bit differently around here, so hopefully you gain something from our harvesting notes!
The short term storage of carrots is a rather simple proposition, and so is storing “a few” carrots. But, if you’re like us and growing 50 pounds of them, the problem of what to do is magnitudes greater.
Some will trivially say, “Just build a root cellar!” Which, we’d argue is not a “simple” solution and offering such options as the “only” way is a major obstacle for a lot of growers. Like many northerners, we really only have three viable storage temperatures available to us. Room temperature, extremely limited refrigeration space and freezing conditions.
We’ve tried pretty much all the carrot storage techniques out there. Most of them work pretty well, but they all rely on temperatures that are difficult to achieve for many northerners. Ideal carrot storage temperatures are around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. But, last year, we found “the one” method that was right for our carrot harvest.
You’ve heard us mention it dozens of times just this season, but yes, the answer is “blanch and freeze.” We found this to be an excellent preparation and storage technique for our carrots and we really scarfed down a lot of carrots last winter and even this summer! The technique does well to preserve both the flavor and texture of our carrots.
To prepare our carrots for the blanch and freeze process, we do end up peeling them. We save those peels, though, as they’re quite valuable and very nutritious! From here, we trim the tops and slice them with our food processor. This gets them into the right form for us, where can can blanch them, dry them and ultimately freeze them for long term storage. We can serve them up all winter as side dishes, put them in soups or stews or use them in practically any dish when we preserve our carrots this way.
Now, in all fairness, we do keep some of our carrots around for fresh eating. Fresh carrots, especially after they’ve experienced a few frosts, are a divine treat of sweet, garden goodness. Storing a couple dozen carrots in the fridge is no big deal. We also opted to set aside some carrots for juicing this year, which we’re really looking forward to!
One of the unrealized gains we’re seeing from using this preservation technique for our carrots is that we can use our “last season” carrots in our vegetable and meat stocks that we’ll make this season. The blanch and freeze process does keep food “safe” for pretty much indefinite periods of time. But after a year of freezer storage, the texture does start to fail. For things like stock, though, texture doesn’t matter in the slightest. Using other storage techniques will never get you to 365+ days later like freezing will!
So, if you’re looking for a method to deal with a lot of carrots and you just don’t have a root cellar handy, we definitely recommend blanch and freeze. There are other storage techniques, such as using a Rubbermaid container with wood shavings, straw or sand to help preserve the carrots. But, you need to maintain “mostly” optimal temperatures with these methods and that can be a tall order in places where it gets to be 40 below!
We were really happy with how our carrots turned out this season, they are exceptionally sweet and extremely flavorful. We’ve been really getting things figured out in recent years, so one of our new website articles this winter will be on growing carrots in cold climates. We’re looking forward to getting back into long form writing, but we have to do that over the winter months!
