How to Dehydrate Carrots 4+ ways! | Dehydrated Food for the Pantry | Long-Term Storage

hey what's up folks you know i had to do it hi folks it's darcy from the purposefulpantry.com and today we are talking dehydrating carrots in every way imaginable stay tuned so we're going to work with the entire range of carrots that people have access to not everybody can get organic carrots with their green tops that's not always the best way to get them anyway because when they have been sitting in a store for a long time the carrot tops have started depleting the carrots of their nutrients because the carrot tops are still growing while the roots are done then we're going to do bulk carrots shredded carrots frozen carrots little petite carrots for i guess these are done for lunch boxes but they were on clearance i grabbed them then we have regular baby carrots but these are the different ways that people have access to carrots so i'm going to do all of them so no matter what carrot you can get well i'm not doing canned i probably could you can so these the range of carrots that you can dry to make sure that you have carrots on the shelf year round okay first let's talk a little bit about prep um i am a big believer that no matter where this came from from your produce section you need to wash everything before you actually use it i'm not going to have you wash me watch me wash these because you know how to wash stuff so let's get started peel or no peel that's up to you okay with baby carrots i do recommend that you at least cut them in half if you want to keep them larger for like maybe putting into stews or something i would recommend cutting them some because they are really dense and fibrous and will take much longer for them to dry um okay i washed my shreds i rinsed them off really well and then have allowed them to just drain and this is what i've got left so i'm putting these on my trays now the thing about carrots and we haven't even talked about blanching it but we're going to go ahead and start talking about it right now we'll i'll show you the process when i'm doing the carrot coins but blanching stops the enzymatic process that allows things allows food to lose their color and nutrients over time on your shelf so when you're doing carrot coins or things that you're going to keep for long term that you plan on having there a long time because root vegetables are already considered to be a thing that needs to be blanched before you dehydrate i highly recommend doing it for long-term storage now for things like shreds i tend to use these more than i do chunks of carrot we eat way more things like carrot cake carrot muffins carrot pancakes anything like that we tend to incorporate carrot shreds into foods meatloaf casseroles and things more than i ever do even either chips or uh coins so i uh i actually take advantage of the shredded carrots that are already done for me um i know that they don't hold as many nutrients because they're not as fresh but they just make my life so much easier so i do not blanch the shreds okay i do blanch the chips and coins so these are going to go straight onto the dehydrator just like they are okay now when doing frozen carrots all you have to do is open the package and put them on your tray that's all that has to happen you do not need to thaw these are partially thawed because i pulled everything out this morning to get started and with all the prep okay these are the little tiny salad uh baby petite ones i guess you would use these for lunch boxes and things for little kids or in salads or anything i am not going to blanch these i'm using these as a test to show you what they're going to look like if they're not blanched how long they take they're not going to be the same as doing you know the bigger chunks of carrots but still i just wanted to put at least one of these batches that wasn't blanched that you could see the difference i don't know that it's going to make a huge difference with this small of a carrot but we're still going to give it a try i've got one tray left on my machine so we're going to get started so all right first off we have our carrot shreds i just went ahead and took them off the trays you didn't need to watch me do that so they are being stored now in a jar ready for conditioning and what conditioning does is make sure that your food is actually dry all the way through not just in certain spots where you tested it so here we go with our shreds and how do i know that they're done they will easily break they are dry they just break easily like that okay you're not going to have a snap like you might have for some foods but you can feel the break happens easily you don't have to work at it at all you're not going to hear like some big snap okay so those are done the reason why i love doing shreds only not only for the convenience because they are so much faster to dry than if you're doing the whole coins these shreds took maybe maybe eight hours okay so why do i like these better to you because the processing is so much faster but this rehydrates so much more quickly and easier than if you do the coins because the coins are denser and if you didn't blanch them they need to be cooked fully after they've rehydrated they're just going to take longer to do but with these shreds they will rehydrate much faster and will be ready for things like quit cooking meals in a jar like for camping and hiking they take less water to rehydrate they take less time you don't have to worry about your water getting cold while you're waiting for the coins to rehydrate these are just so much more convenient and quick try that again if you would like to see a list of a lot of meal and a jar recipes i've got a link down in the description box below where i make a database that i've vetted through all of them to make sure they're safe to make sure they're a good recipe so they're ready for you down there and let's get on with the coins next shall we by the way these will store for about a year 18 months that's the optimal storage for any dehydrated food you might get longer um and that's fine that's that's not saying that it's not going to last longer but optimally you're looking at about 18 months maybe two years at the most but what happens is that over time things start to to deplete so you're talking about the vitamins you start to lose vitamins you start to lose color especially if they weren't blanched you'll start to see this turn like a white color uh you might lose the texture so that the texture is not so great after a while so look at your dehydrated feeds being from one to two years maybe more but that's about your optimum okay okay let me show you side by side these are frozen blanched non-blanched okay there is a bit of a difference i know the lighting here isn't showing it so right there is a bit of a difference in the coloring here versus here blanched i'm sorry blanched will keep their coloring over long-term storage better than non-blanched blanched will also rehydrate better than non-blanched so this is going to be a choice for you about whether or not you want to blanch or not because it depends on what you like so what you need to do is actually do this for yourself you may prefer blanching and how it responds to rehydrating and then cooking versus how the non-blanch responds to rehydrating and cooking that is all going to be your opinion and what you prefer okay i can tell you what i do i prefer blanched i prefer the way it comes back i don't like to do unblanched because this doesn't hold for long-term storage okay because it starts to lose color over time and i think this works better in meals in a jar type situations because you don't have the issue of having to cook it again you just reheat you rehydrate allow it to reheat and you're good to go okay so let's get these stored all right so now we're just going to go through the conditioning process with these is just like we did before we're doing both the frozen and the blanched all in the same bucket because they work just basically the same way i don't need to separate these out all right let's talk about storage folks that have been with me for a very long time know what the next step is what you need to do is condition your dehydrated foods before you store i'm about to use a lid like this it's just a screw online it's not an actual canning jar lid it does have a silicone seal around the inside that can help with making this air tight but i'm going to go ahead and just put a used lid on the inside and just do this that way i am doubly sure about the uh the airtightness of this container okay what airtight means is i did not draw out the air it means there is no exchange of air going back and forth which is what makes plastic wear and some lids when you screw them on and they don't the plastic lids the white kind of plastic lids you can get a lot of those things are not airtight because it allows the exchange of air in and out of the jar okay or in and out of the container the same way that zipper top bags do they just are not airtight so we have an airtight container and we're going to condition this which means we're going to let this sit for about five to seven days and look at it to find out if there are moisture issues at all i do recommend this for doing all dehydrated foods because sometimes you can catch yourself having dried something but a portion of it didn't dry but you tested the sheet but you didn't test all the areas so something didn't dry as well and can create mold problems down the road so you're gonna take your jar you're gonna shake it around okay once a day just shake it let it be come back to it do it again what you're looking for over time what can happen is that especially with vegetables and fruits that are high in sugar especially with vegetables and fruits that are higher in sugar you can get compaction sticking which is when the force of all of this pushing down on the bottom of the jar makes things stick to the top okay that doesn't mean they're they're they need to be redried it means that if you can shake it off really easily it's just sugar and it's fine sometimes it's a matter of static especially with smaller things like like the shreds you can actually get some static sticking at the top but again as long as you can easily shake it off and you don't have to force a shake it's fine you don't need to do anything else to it what you're looking for are clumps of fruit or vegetables in your jar sticking together as you move it or sticking to the top and not coming off easily then you need to throw it back in the dehydrator allow it to dry more and then you're good however if you do see mold forming in here let's say you're on day five or six and you're starting to see mold you need to toss everything because where mold grows here it's already developing everywhere else in the jar and you don't want to just pick out a portion of it and then think that you've gotten it all because you probably haven't so that's what you're looking for once you're ready then you're ready to store now dehydrated foods are fine to be stored in an airtight container with nothing else you do not have to use moisture absorbers you do not have to use o2 absorbers as long as you're storing in a jar that's the right size so we're not looking at storing these carrots in a jar that is only full this much and you have all of this air you do not need to use anything um you will see people and you see me do it before and you'll see me do it again or i might vacuum seal this because i'm going to put it away for long term which means i'm not touching that jar for at least a year probably i don't do that a lot anymore where i'm because i try to rotate through everything so that i don't have the issue um but you are welcome to add a moisture absorber to this because you are in and out of your jar all the time and um and you live in a humid environment where every time you open the jar it's introducing more moisture into the jar that doesn't mean it's putting wet in here but it's adding moisture which makes this then absorb the moisture gets softer can lead to mold problems down the line okay you're welcome to use a moisture absorber that way if you want to do long-term storage you can either vacuum seal with a vacuum sealing machine and the attachment that goes on here to do it i'll link in the description box and right up here in the icards about how to do that you can do that or you can add an oxygen absorber to this jar just know that if you do the o2 you have to replace it any time you open the jar which is why i don't use them much because they are not reusable and once you've used it it's done you've got to replace it okay but really all that you need to do is this you do not need to do anything extra to it okay this will last you approximately 12 to 18 months for optimal storage which means that you may get longer but over time foods tend to start losing their nutrients the texture when you rehydrate them and the coloring even if you've blanched it if you keep it a really long time you may start seeing color change because that's just what happens to foods over time so your optimal storage is 12 to 18 months you're likely to get longer try to rotate through it better all right okay so now what i've done is taken about a quarter cup of each of these uh dried carrot coins okay they're dried bits and am going to rehydrate them there are approximately one quarter cup of each of these in each jar a quarter cup is approximately one cup of fresh okay that's good approximation so i just want you to see what they look like um here where you're seeing the non-blanched okay are floating the blanched or not i what that means i don't know they have the same amount of water we're going to rehydrate them so that you can see what they look like after and kind of get an idea about the texture so i want you to see the results from being soaked in the fridge overnight and i've also let them sit out for a little while blanched non-blanched now remember these are the ones i did cut down a little harder but that's what they look like we'll pull them out a second so you can see the difference but there there are those differences here's what they look like when they're on a plate uh the color is a little different these are a brighter orange than these i know it's not showing up on camera very well but in real life these are a little yellower these are a little or more they have more orange to them the texture of this when you feel it feels more like a raw carrot you can feel the fiber i should say on these they feel more like cooked carrots now these were not fully cooked these were only blanched for about three and a half minutes uh and so that is kind of the difference about how they're going to be when you when you blanch them or none so these are fully rehydrated what you have next is you have to make sure that they've had time to cook when you're putting them in a dish so these will need a little extra time uh because they need to cook more these won't have to cook as long so that's the difference this is just more fibrous this is not because part of the blanching also breaks down the fibers so there's the difference there okay kids what time is it it's time to powder i'm only doing this to show you how you can powder carrots i don't use a lot of carrot powder on its own if i have extra that i'm rotating through that i need to get new stock up and i want to use my old stock i'll do it and put it into the general vegetable powder and that's what i'll do with this is put it into my generic vegetable powder i don't do carrot powder a lot on its own but what you can do with it is you can color pasta you can add it to spaghetti sauces you can do all of those things that you do with regular vegetable powder just add this to it in about a teaspoon to a tablespoon uh increments until you get a feel for how you like it how it colors things you'll want to play with your powders and as you add them to your foods to find out what you and your family like versus what you know if you just put a whole tablespoon in it might alter it you'll have to play with that a little bit so um before we get started in the powdering i just want to kind of walk through what i had already done so what we have here are the shreds okay the carrot shreds we have the blanched carrot pieces and then we have our non-blanch carrot pieces and then we have our carrot tops and i'll that's the next video coming is how i did this but basically what i did is i took the carrot tops i washed them i put them onto trays and dried them at 95 f which is 35c and until they were crispy then i just put them into a little spice jar that these can be used in place of parsley or you could just use this as part of your regular green powder okay so let's get started here if you wanted to do a bunch of carrot powder you could in fact not blanch this and just go from your drying your carrots to the point that you're going to go ahead and make powder you do not have to blanch are we ready remember with using a grinder of any kind whether you're using a small coffee grinder or a larger bullet blender like this you never want to just especially with something hard like carrots you never just want to start the grind at full at full power okay you always want to pulse it five six times until you get it down and then go ahead and do the full grind what you don't want to do is wear this motor out by doing harder pieces like this if you just push it down and just let it go so here we go and i can already tell you i did not get a tremendous small powder out of this fine powder but i'm not going to keep going partly because it's early in the morning and my family's still asleep and while i can get away with a little bit of that forever not so what you're going to see is at the very top you're going to see some bits some of it but then at the bottom you see where the grind is a lot finer okay so let me stick this okay i'm gonna stick this into a very small like i think this is a jelly jar that i got from somewhere all right uh so here is i hope you can see this and show it from the inside so you see this the larger bits um i could go ahead and grind this a little bit more and you would get a finer grind and you can see the finer grind at the bottom here okay so it does grind down well i just need to do it again and what i could do is just sift this out with a fine fine mesh sieve and um and then grind that part again but because and i could have also done it in my coffee grinder which is a smaller um bowl which would allow this to grind more finely just because it's the quantity is smaller so it keeps it down in the blades better but i didn't want to get out more equipment this morning and make even more noise than i already was so there is your carrot powder now granted i'm going to put this into my vegetable powder it's just going to get blended in because it will be used more that way i do not have to worry about these bits right here because within whatever i'm cooking they will easily incorporate into it so it's not like it's going to be a big deal so okay so there you have it we have our carrot coins our carrot shreds and see can you see the difference between these two blanched and unblanched our carrot powder and our carrot tops so if you would like to watch me do the carrot tops it'll be here for in another day or so but i'll put it right here in the video as soon as they're available and if you want to see more about dehydrating click this video right here and until i see you again next time happy dehydrating

Channel: The Purposeful Pantry

Views: 53,628

Keywords: the purposeful pantry, dehydrating food, dehydrating for beginners, dehydrating tips, dehydraitng carrots, dehydrating carots, drying carrots, preserving carrots, how to save carrots, pantry storage, dehydrating for the pantry, are carrot tops edible, can i save carrot greens, can i save carrot tops, drying carrots and carrot tops, do have to blanche carrots, blanching carrots, long term food storage, prepper pantry, prepared pantry

Id: D7LdrUMhLio

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022