Hello! I'd like to tell you about what you can do with leftover carrots. Of course, they feed them to cows, pigs, and who knows what else, but we usually throw them away since we don't keep any. It so happened this year that after digging up the carrots, we put all the misshapen and broken ones in a bag and put them near the barn. But no one threw them out. They simply forgot about them in the hustle and bustle of other chores and problems. Then yesterday I stumbled upon them. I brought them into the summer kitchen and thought – why throw them away if you can recycle them?! These vegetables are so expensive these days, so every piece is worth its weight in gold.
I decided to just grate them and freeze them, because the roots would go bad fresh, and I had nothing to preserve them with.
This is the pile I had (of course, that's not all):
And here are some specimens I came across:
So, how and what I did:
- First, I soaked it in water for a couple of hours, then washed it with a brush and laid it on a towel to dry (for about an hour). Then I trimmed the ends on both sides.
- Then I peeled the skin. I used the cheapest knife I could find (only 70 rubles), but it was very sharp (so I ended up cutting myself).
- There are root vegetables with these little bumps that make it very difficult to peel the skin.
- I cut them off immediately with a knife and then clean them.
- After cleaning, I had minimal waste. Look how fine the cleaning is.
- Now it's time to address the problem areas. For example, on the cracked fruits, I cut out these spots using a regular kitchen knife. Like this:
- Then I washed the peeled carrots and put them back into the bowl.
- I started shredding. I haven't used a regular grater in a long time; I prefer the Korean carrot-style slicing. It looks better than a regular grater, in my opinion.
- Look, the center of mine was frozen, and very badly, that's why it's a bit crumbly. Some fruits are slightly frozen, but normal.
- If the core is severely frozen, I grate the carrots in a circle, meaning I throw away the excessively frozen center.
- If there are any very green spots, discard them too. Unripe carrots have a bitter taste.
In the end, I got a carrot that looked like this:
You can then package it in bags and freeze it. Or use it for preserving salads and preserves. If you have beets, onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes (or tomato paste), make a borscht dressing.