Want a Recipe for Pickiling Carrots

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bracconiere

Jolly Alcoholic - In Remembrance 2023
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jan 19, 2018
Messages
27,725
Reaction score
17,251
Location
S.AZ
@Yooper lol, i just realized there's not many threads in this forum....

can you enlighten me to how to pickle carrots? i've been only getting about 3000-4000 IU's of vitamin A recently. basicly bare minimum, and carrots are cheap. i think if i pickle them i can turn the IU's to 11, for very few calories! :mug:
 
I would simply add washed and gently scrubbed fresh carrots to a 5 % brine solution and to that brine add some pickling spices such as garlic, peppercorns, perhaps some bay leaves and possibly dill leaves (whatever flavors you like: it's the brine that encourages the lacto bacteria and inhibits bacteria that we disprefer). I would cut the carrots into small pieces or use "baby carrots" .I suspect that brining will go faster with smaller pieces.

Don't make the brine too too strong. A too concentrated salt solution will inhibit the growth of the bacterial colony you want.

Pickle them on your countertop (not the fridge) and taste after a week. If the pickle flavor is strong enough , refrigerate to inhibit further fermentation. If not strong enough you can leave for another few days and taste again. Not sure about carrots but i generally add tannin to anything I pickle. The tannin helps keep everything more crisp. But carrots are not likely to become mushy
 
so that'd be like 90g's salt for a half gallon masson jar? would i be able to use potassium chloride?
 
yup , close enough. (200 g to one gallon or 4 Liters) I don't know about K Cl as salt. Would you use that to add to french fries or to bread dough? Na Cl is table salt. I would use an iodine-free table salt and without any anti-caking compounds. The kinda salt that you would use in cheese making.
 
Last edited:
I use 3% brine with kosher salt. Carrots cut into spears, packed into mason jar vertically. Garlic, peppercorns, ginger are delicious. Great for bloody mary stirrers.

When I was living in AZ my countertop was too warm most of the year. You're looking for 65-70.
 
When I was living in AZ my countertop was too warm most of the year. You're looking for 65-70.


thankfully i'm prepared! lol


so i take really in a round about way all i'm doing is sorta soaking them for a week in salt water? with whatever i think will taste good?

ginger does sound like it would meld with carrot good!
 
thankfully i'm prepared! lol


so i take really in a round about way all i'm doing is sorta soaking them for a week in salt water? with whatever i think will taste good?

ginger does sound like it would meld with carrot good!

My great grandma use to pickle carrots with ginger...insanely good dude!
 
Really more than a week, especially the first batch. In subsequent batches you can add a teaspoon or so of the previous brine as a starter. The longer you give the beasties to work the more starches and sugars are broken down before you put them in your gut. Flavor-wise, you'll go all the way through the spectrum from barely sour, half-sour, full-sour.
 
oh, about the lid...i'm thinking like a dish cloth and rubber band on top? sorry if i sound like a total newbie. but i am....
 
I like them at about that long. It's definitely one of those 'your mileage will vary' things. The important things are to get the salt concentration right and keep the veggies under the surface. That stuff will keep you safe. Everything else is by personal preference.
 
You can use a dishcloth or a coffee filter or if you want and are able - you can drill a hole in a mason jar lid, insert a grommet and press home an airlock (filled with water) or you can simply place the jar lid atop and screw very loosely and "burp" every day or so.
 
so if i really want to pucker up, give em a month?
I don't know that they are mouth puckeringly bitter. They are sour (or half sour or.. ) But sour is not bitter. Lactic acid is a gentler acid than ascetic or malic or even tartaric. When was the last time a red wine you made that went through MLF was mouth -puckeringly bitter?
 
When was the last time a red wine you made that went through MLF was mouth -puckeringly bitter?

i've never made wine, so never... ;)


I don't know that they are mouth puckeringly bitter. They are sour (or half sour or.. ) But sour is not bitter. Lactic acid is a gentler acid than ascetic or malic or even tartaric.

i didn't say bitter? at any rate, bitter, sour, tart....i'm going to give em a month, and hope to tang-chung! ;)
 
I pickle carrots , cauliflower, broccoli, eggs, anything can be pickled. I used half white vinegar and half water , put in a few slices of hot peppers , jalapeños, banana peppers, spices , pepper corns , pickling spice cloves , its endless
 
I pickle carrots , cauliflower, broccoli, eggs, anything can be pickled. I used half white vinegar and half water , put in a few slices of hot peppers , jalapeños, banana peppers, spices , pepper corns , pickling spice cloves , its endless
Does that still allow for lacto fermentation?


as far as i know, those are refrigerator pickles...
 
look neat, i'm thinking i'd HAVE to use a starter with them? being they pull a vacuum?
No starter required. I mostly make sauerkraut, and the only ingredients are cabbage, caraway seeds, and salt. The lids come with a vacuum pump to put the contents under a vacuum while fermentation is getting underway, to inhibit the growth of any aerobic bacteria. The only vegetables I've had trouble with during fermentation are tomatoes; I got a yeast infection that probably wouldn't have been bad to eat, but was very unsightly (the tomatoes were covered with a gray yeast coating. I gave them the heave, and haven't tried tomatoes again.)
 
wekk next time i buy groceries, i'm buying a couple bags of baby carrots for sure. if i have luck with a dish cloth, i'll have to seriously consider the vacuum lids... not too much money...
 
All the little beasties you're hoping will come to party are hopping a ride on the vegetables, not so much collected from the air. Best to use good quality organic where they haven't been killed off yet.

Baby carrots aren't really. They're normal carrots run through the tumbler down to size. Get the bag of full-size organics. Scrub them good, but leave some of the skin. That's where the good stuff is. Little beasties to get the party going and vitamins for you.
 
All the little beasties you're hoping will come to party are hopping a ride on the vegetables, not so much collected from the air. Best to use good quality organic where they haven't been killed off yet.

Baby carrots aren't really. They're normal carrots run through the tumbler down to size. Get the bag of full-size organics. Scrub them good, but leave some of the skin. That's where the good stuff is. Little beasties to get the party going and vitamins for you.


guess i could make my own baby carrots, and just chop them down to 2-3" lengths....don't think i have the patience for spears.
 
guess i could make my own baby carrots, and just chop them down to 2-3" lengths....don't think i have the patience for spears.

By spears, I mean cut an inch shorter than the jar and split lengthwise in half or quarters. I'm pretty lazy about vegetable cutting myself.

Really important to keep them fully submerged. The salt water acts as your lid to keep oxygen and undesirable organisms out.
 
I am a throat cancer survior. The raditon treatment made my saliva glands less active than normal. So my mouth dose not clear spice, wine, whiskey or vinegar very well and it all burns.

I started to look into lacto fermantaion. I use 3TBS of kosher salt to 1 quart of water. I pack the carrots tight into a pint jar that has corriander seeds and ginger slices in it (A tsp of corriander seeds about 3 TBS of ginger slices (try amounts that work for you.) I cover with the brine and leave it on the counter DON"T!! tighten the jar lid. Leave it on the counter for 3 days then refridgerate they keep for months if you don't eat them all in the first week.
 
Back
Top