So, we talked about our carrot harvest yesterday. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the structure and nutrition of the carrot!
We approach our carrot preservation a bit unconventionally, given our subarctic disposition. As mentioned, we store some of them fresh for “short term.” But, the bulk of our harvest sees a blanch and freeze of peeled carrots, primarily for those longer term uses. In many circles, it’s practically blasphemy to peel carrots like we do, even for preservation purposes!
Here’s what’s up. The argument goes that the majority of the carrot’s nutrition is found in the peel. To understand the argument, it’s important to know that the carrot has three major layers. From outside to inside, you have the skin, the phloem and the xylem. Otherwise put, you have the peel, the intermediate layer and the inner core. When you peel a carrot, you remove the skin and some of the phloem or intermediate layer.
It is true that the majority of vitamin C and beta carotene are found in the carrot’s outer layers. And peeling a carrot does reduce “some” of the carrot’s nutrition. But, that’s not to say the inner layer and core are entirely devoid of nutrition. In fact, the majority of the carrot’s calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus and fiber are actually found within the inner core of the carrot. When you peel a carrot, you do reduce the nutrition of that carrot by about 50%.
We’re definitely playing the nutrition game with our food, but the casual observer might not immediately appreciate our approach. So, we’ll lay it out. We save those carrot peels that are full of vitamin C, beta carotene and other nutrients. We typically toss them into a gallon freezer bag and sneak them into a corner of our freezer.
We use the heck out of those carrot peels! They are typically a major bulk ingredient of our stock making processes, which ensures our stocks are rich in vitamin C and beta carotene. In fact, bulk processing our carrots this way helps us use those peels more effectively, since we can easily package, store and then use them in one go. That’s much harder to do, one carrot at a time!
It’s easy to look upon a practice and pass quick judgement. There’s a lot of areas where we understand the foundation of an idea, but our actual practice diverges from what might be considered “traditional” in the approach. Many times driven by necessity, given that we’re growing at 65 north!
In this case, we maximize the nutritional benefit of those carrot peels in our diet, but also accommodate our short and long term preservation needs of our produce. Plus, we get incredible veggie and meat stocks without having to dig deep into our carrot supply! We rob Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.
Anyway, we do try to put up a post or two about the nutrition of food each season. Truly, it’s at the very root of why we do this stuff!
