Welcome to Moat Cottage Homesteading. When you're dehydrating carrots, choose fresh crisp carrots
wash and scrub the carrots clean with a vegetable brush removing any dirt,
you don't have to peel the carrots but just make sure they're nice and clean
remove the tops from the carrots and slice the carrots into four millimeter pieces,
that's just over an eighth of an inch.
The bigger end of the carrots are cut in half as well.
You can julienne or dice your carrots or you can grate the carrots up and use your
screens for the small pieces to sit on in the dehydrated so that they don't fall through.
For sliced diced and julienne carrots we need to blanch them before dehydrating them.
Once all your carrots are chopped up how you want them, place them into boiling water
bring it back up to the boil. It's two minutes in boiling water for sliced and diced carrots
and one minute for julienne carrots and you don't have to blanch grated carrots. Strain
them straight away. They are now a bright deep orange and beginning to soften on the outside but
is still crisp on the inside. Put them into a bowl of cold water, making sure they're all covered
strain again and put them in a bowl with clean tea towel to soak up any extra moisture
Place the carrots in a single layer on your trays with a small amount of
space around each piece for good air circulation while dehydrating
To use dehydrated carrots you need to rehydrate them
if they are sliced or diced it takes about an hour in boiling water for them to rehydrate properly,
if they're julienned or grated then you need only 30 minutes.
I use my dehydrated carrots in slow cooked dishes like
stews and bone broths so there is plenty of cooking time for rehydration in those dishes
Place the lid on your trays and take them over to the dehydrator
make sure all your trays are in alignment and set your dehydrator to 50 degrees
Celsius or 125 degrees Fahrenheit rearrange the trays every few hours for a more even drying time
on these round dehydrators the bottom dries a lot faster than the top trays.
Drying time is variable depending on your machine, the size of the pieces,
the humidity and temperature of the room. It usually takes between 2 to 15 hours for carrots.
They're ready when they've shrunken up and are leathery,
with no moisture inside. Sliced pieces may be slightly flexible still
To see more dehydrating videos check out this link and if you want to see what we're doing on
our small homestead then watch this link. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one.