Making Ginger Carrots 2015

Saturday was a red-letter day.  We got up and got all our chores done and Benjamin headed off for the State Livestock show with his heifer, Amy.  Russ was in from college and we changed the oil in his pickup truck, chopped a stump down to ground level, and built another set of roosts in the hen house.

After the initial carrot harvest, I left some of the smaller carrots in the ground to grow for a while.  I figured now was as good a time as any to harvest one of the remaining rows.  I pulled half of a 5 gallon bucket full of carrots and washed them up real good outside and then brought them in to process further.

More Carrots

We've eaten a bunch raw, blanched and frozen some, and have more in the fridge to eat.  We realized that we hadn't made any Ginger Carrots yet.  We learned to make them from a recipe in Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cook book.  This is an easy recipe that is a good initiation into lacto-fermentation.  We always make Ginger Carrots and eat on them for several months (or as long as they last) in the fridge.  We doubled the recipe in order to make 2 quarts.  Here's what we did:

First we peeled the carrots.  We save the carrot tops and peelings to either feed to the chickens and cows or to compost.

Peeled Carrots

We put the shredding blade on the food processor and shredded until we had eight (8) cups of beautiful shredded orange carrots.

Fresh shredded carrots - not an hour out of the ground

You pour 8 cups shredded carrots, 2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger, 2 tablespoons sea salt, and 8 tablespoons (or half a cup) of whey.  Tricia had made some kefir and was allowing the whey to drip out of it into a measuring cup.

Separating the whey out of the homemade yogurt

Once she had half a cup, she poured that in a large plastic bowl.  In this case we use the top to a cake carrier.

Pouring the whey on top of the salt, ginger, and shredded carrots

I then use the head of a wooded mallet to pound the carrots into the whey, salt, and ginger, bruising the carrots and incorporating all the juices together.  I pounded until the carrots were all beaten up.

Pounding the carrots

Using a canning funnel, I moved equal amounts into two wide mouth quart jars and crammed the carrots down until they were packed tight and the carrot juice barely covered the top.

And now...  the work is done.  Simply cover the jars tightly and allow to sit at room temperature for 3 days.  After 3 days move them to the fridge.  We generally put off eating it for 3 weeks as we find the flavors get better with age.

Lacto-fermented Ginger Carrots

This is one of those things that is good AND good for you.  We'll open a jar and eat it as a condiment before we start our evening meal.  According to what we read, eating ginger carrots is a great aid in digestion.