Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Inspiration

What to do with all the carrots from your fall harvest

Rebecca Wolken
By

We grew up hearing that eating carrots would make our eyes prettier, and while that isn’t true, eating carrots is fantastic for your eye health. Now that fall harvest is just around the corner, you might end up overloaded with carrots. Of course, you can eat them raw with a bit of veggie dip, but you might get sick of that pretty quickly.

Below, we go through all the different ways you can cook, bake, shred, ferment, and preserve carrots to ensure you don’t let any of those gorgeous orange veggies go to waste.

making carrot cake

Cooking and baking with carrots

You might have hated eating your vegetables as a kid, but there are so many ways to eat a carrot that there’s sure to be a style that will make you fall in love with these healthy roots.

Related

Baked

We think carrot cake gets a bad rap, and here’s a recipe from the New York Times Cooking website to convince you how delicious carrot cake can be. These carrots might not be healthy anymore with walnuts and cream cheese icing, but they sure are tasty! Just be sure to skin the carrots to ensure they aren’t too tough and don’t add an unpleasant texture to the cake.

Roasted

A fantastic side dish for a chuck roast in the middle of winter is roasted winter veggies. Among those veggies are beets, potatoes, and carrots. Roasting these with fresh rosemary, olive oil, salt, and pepper is a healthy and simple way to eat veggies. You can leave the skins on the carrots, or you can take them off. Just remember that a lot of the carrot’s nutritional value is locked within that skin.

Soups

Making carrot soup is one of the best ways to use up a lot of carrots quickly. This carrot soup by Minimalist Baker calls for a whole pound of carrots, and you can easily make this soup in bulk and freeze it for later. With unique ingredients such as ginger, Thai spice, and fresh homegrown carrots, you’re sure to love this soup as a side with sandwiches for lunch or a light dinner.

Salads

We’ve probably all had that chopped house salad at a restaurant with iceberg lettuce, onion, tomato, and shredded carrots, and sometimes that simplistic salad hits the spot. However, this isn’t the only type of salad that shredded carrots go well with. You can add these crunchy treats to almost any salad for extra color and vitamins.

Juices

Juice cleanses are a bit controversial, but it can’t be ignored just how good for you they can be. Carrots are a popular juice choice because of their semi-sweet flavor. Add in an apple, some kale, and maybe a cucumber, and you have a snack that will boost your energy and nutrition. Before you juice carrots, though, you might want to skin them to make it easier on your juicer.

Steamed

Another simple way to cook carrots is by steaming them. With a veggie steamer basket and about 15 minutes, you can have soft and delicious carrots as a side dish. Keep it healthy and simple with a light sprinkle of salt, or add a square of butter for some extra flavor. You can even puree them after you steam them and make your own baby food!

carrot juice

Preserving Carrots

Even with all those fantastic carrot recipes above, you might still be overloaded with carrots. It’ll break your heart to watch them go bad, but after a while, there is such a thing as too many carrots! So here are some ways you can prolong the life of your carrots with some preserving techniques.

Fermentation

Fermented food isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a great way to pack away extra carrots, and fermented food is good for your gut health. Here is a how to guide on fermenting carrots if you’ve never fermented anything before. It can be intimidating, but we think you’ll be happy with the results.

Canning

Another popular way to preserve carrots is by canning them. This will result in a similar tasting carrot to steaming them, but they will have a much longer shelf life than their steamed friends.

Dehydrating

It seems you can make “chips” out of anything, and carrots are no exception. While these won’t last as long as fermented or canned carrots, dehydrating them will prolong the shelf life significantly compared to fresh ones. Slice them up and put them in a dehydrator or oven for 8 to 12 hours.

If you have picky eaters in your home, you’re sure to find at least one of the recipes gets them to eat their carrots. Or, if you have a family full of carrot lovers, this list can help you broaden your horizons.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
What is coconut soil, and how can it make your garden better?
Learn about coconut soil, a sustainable must for your hydroponic system
Will Blesch
By Will Blesch
September 22, 2022
Person with small plant in hands

Coconut soil, or coco soil, as it's often called, hasn't been around for very long, but its history goes back only a few decades. In a relatively short amount of time, it's gone from a niche product to a popular trend among gardeners who need a highly efficient growing medium.

There are myriad benefits waiting for the gardener who chooses to use coconut soil. One of the most attractive benefits is that coco soil and coco coir are considered to be entirely renewable and sustainable.

Read more
The best peony fertilizers that will keep your flowers pink and healthy
Which peony fertilizers to buy to keep your flowers thriving throughout the growing season
Rebecca Wolken
By Rebecca Wolken
July 11, 2022
Pink peony bush

Peonies are one of the most luscious and beautiful flowers you can grow in your garden, and luckily they're pretty easy and have an impressive plant hardiness zone range between zones 3 and 8. While you might need to give these plants a little more attention at the extremes of this range, they can still thrive and produce stunning blooms.

There are 33 known species of peonies ranging in size, bloom color, and care needs, so you're sure to find one that's right for you and your climate. The Netherlands and Alaska are the two largest cut peony producers in the world. The longer cooler growing season allows these plants to bloom later than in other regions. So don't be discouraged if you're in a cooler climate, you'll probably have the best-looking peony plant on your Instagram feed.

Read more
Do you live in climate zone 6? How to tell if your plants will last
Stacey Nguyen
By Stacey Nguyen
June 23, 2022
A hand reaching up to pick a ripe red apple

With cool winters and long summers, climate zone 6 offers a lovely and agreeable environment to grow a range of flowers, shrubs, fruits, and vegetables. Its mildly freezing winters make it ideal for plants that need a cooling period to thrive come the growing season, but you may occasionally want to overwinter some plants or cover them in frost blankets. If you live in zone 6 and want to know which plants will last in your garden throughout the year, here’s what you need to know.

Where is zone 6?
Wondering what climate zones actually are? The United States Department of Agriculture has developed the handy Plant Hardiness Zone Map to divide the country into areas based on annual minimum temperature ranges. Today, the map consists of 13 different zones. Specific regions will have unique climates, but hardiness zones are a reliable general guideline for gardening. When a plant is “hardy” to a zone, it means that it will usually survive there over the wintertime. A perennial plant in a particular climate zone will last more than just one growing season in it, while an annual will die out after one growing season. When browsing for plants, check the labels to see the hardiness zone—this will let you know if that plant will last in your region.

Read more