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It’s no secret, I found a part of my passion for nutrition in pickling foods. More specifically, I found my passion for nutrition in fermented pickled foods. But for those of you who just want to get their toes wet in pickling and don’t want to commit to wild fermenting carrot sticks, these Quick Pickled Carrots are for you.
Seriously guys, I introduced my roommate to these, and these questioned whether or not she would ever go back to the “unpickled” version.
Before we dive into making these quick pickled carrots, it’s essential we talk about the process of pickling and quick pickling.
Wikipedia defines pickling as “the process of preserving or extending the shelf life of food by either anaerobic fermentation in brine or immersion in vinegar”.
Basically, pickling refers to a wide variety of preservation techniques, from quick pickling, canning, to fermenting.
Now we can talk about fermentation another time, today let’s talk about quick pickling, since this is a quick pickled carrot recipe.
Quick pickling, as I use it in my recipes, involves soaking vegetables in a vinegar mixture for a few hours to infuse flavor into the vegetables quickly. This process is much faster than other pickling techniques that have your food sit in brine, vinegar etc. for a few days to weeks (like with fermentation).
Quick pickling carrots can take anywhere from 4 hours to 48 hours. The longer you let your carrots pickle, the more flavor they will have. If you don’t mind sacrificing crunch, you can pickle carrots faster if you cook them beforehand. fridge because of the acidity.
Quick pickling vegetables like carrots is a healthy form of preservation and flavoring. It’s a way of saving vegetables for use in the future. In my book, it’s a way to increase vegetable intake and diversity in someone’s diet and that alone, make it healthy.
These quick pickled carrots are delicious and good for you. Pickled foods in general, are good for you for a variety of reasons. All of which depend on the kind of pickling as well.
If you’re eating pickled food made with raw vinegar or you’re eating fermented pickled food, you get the added benefit of probiotics, as these foods are full of them. Probiotics in fermented foods have been known to improve intestinal health, support the immune system, improve the bioavailability of nutrients, and more.
Luckily this quick pickle recipe uses raw apple cider vinegar (but if you don’t have any, don’t sweat it, regular apple cider vinegar will suffice too, you just won’t get the probiotic benefits). Additonally, the raw apple cider vinegar contains B vitamins, polyphenols, and acetic acid which helps improve absorption of certain nutrients.
Regardless of if the pickles are fermented or made with raw vinegar or not, pickled vegetables are vegetables, and thus, are a benefit to anyone’s diet (hello micronutrients and antioxidants).
Making quick pickled carrots sounds quite daunting, however, it’s really quite simple. At least this recipe is, at involves no heat and just a lot of mixing and waiting. To make these quick pickled carrots you’ll need to:
And that’s it, it is really the simple to make this pickled carrot recipe.
Quick pickled carrots sound fun and all, but how would you actually use them? Well you can use these carrots in a variety of ways:
Now that’s out of the way, let’s dive into the recipe!