Recipe with step-by-step photos of preparing dried carrots in an electric dryer for the winter. How to dry carrots in the oven

Vegetables

Description

Dried carrots- a simple, healthy and very convenient winter preparation that will not only save you time on preparing many dishes, but will also reveal the taste of the vegetable itself in a new way. Interesting fact: after drying, the carrot slices will have a wave-like shape, but after adding them to hot broth will again become familiar carrot circles. Carrots are also one of those few products that, after drying, retain all their beneficial microelements and vitamins. Thus, even in dried form, the vegetable will delight you big amount carotene, as well as a wide variety of minerals.

In addition to the fact that dried carrots can be very successfully used in the preparation of various hot dishes, they will be no less appetizing in their original form. Peculiar carrot chips will give a head start to any drying, both in terms of taste and in terms of usefulness. The fact is that carrots, even when dried, have fewer calories than many fruits. At the same time, her natural taste slightly sweet and literally personifies summer. Considering these facts, carrots, even in dried form, can be added to the diet menu. Today we will use an electric dryer to dry carrots, although you can also prepare dried carrots in the oven. The step-by-step photo recipe below will describe the process of drying carrots in more detail. Let's start cooking dried carrots

for the winter at home.

Ingredients

Steps Apart from the carrots themselves, we don’t need anything else in this recipe. Choose your vegetable responsibly: carrots should be young, firm and sweet.

It's good if you have the opportunity to grow vegetables in your own garden. In any other situation, the carrots will need to be thoroughly washed before cooking. First of all, we rinse the collected or purchased carrots in cold water, ridding the root vegetables of dust and dirt..

The easiest way to do this is to simply put the vegetables in a deep bowl with liquid, leaving the carrots there for 5-10 minutes The washed carrots now need to be removed from the green stem and part of the dense base to which it is attached as shown in the photo. The fact is that carrots are one of the few vegetables that do not have a peel, so most often just the coarsened top layer is cut off in a very thin layer.

Now as for cutting the carrots. It would be ideal to get neat circles of equal diameter, the thickness of which will not exceed a couple of millimeters. This is difficult to achieve in reality, so just don't use the narrowest section of the root vegetable, but chop up the rest.

Fill the prepared, clean and dry tray of the electric dryer with carrot slices. It’s okay if the pieces overlap each other: this will not interfere with the drying process. Place the carrots in the dryer and cook overnight.

After the specified time, the bright, appetizing carrot shavings can be transferred to clean and dry glass jars. Also like this vegetable preparation Can be stored in tin boxes or cotton bags. We have already described the use of such dried carrots in more detail in the description, so now you know how to save yourself time and preserve vitamins for winter. Dried carrots are ready for the winter.

Bon appetit!

Step 1: Prepare the carrots for drying.

It is best to dry carrots when they are young. She is the one who has sweetish taste and is rich in beneficial microelements. First, you need to peel it and rinse thoroughly in water. After this, dry the fruits naturally or soak with paper towels. Next, grate the carrots coarse grater. We try to do this so that all the carrot pieces are uniform in both thickness and length. It is fundamentally important point: The moisture should evaporate evenly.

Step 2: Dry the carrots.

On a dry baking sheet (you can line it with baking parchment) spread the grated carrots in a small even layer. You can also use a dryer for these purposes and do this over gas stove or use an electric dryer, if you have one in your kitchen. The temperature for cooking carrots should be no more than 70 degrees. Cooking time 2 hours. Periodically, the pieces must be turned over and checked so that they do not burn. The finished carrots will be significantly reduced in size and will also be very dry in appearance.

Step 3: Serve dried carrots.

Cool the dried carrots completely, then collect them in a gauze bag or plastic bag, but do not rush to tie it and put it in a cabinet. It is necessary to leave the collected carrots open in a dry place, even in the sun. Thus we withstand it 2 days, periodically shaking the bag so that the carrots turn over there. This is important so that the product dries out and does not become moldy during storage. After following all these measures, carrots can be eaten or used in your culinary preparations. Bon appetit everyone!

- Dried carrots can be stored very quickly for a long time, but important requirements must be observed. First, keep it in a dry place. Both glass containers and paper or plastic bags are suitable for storage.

- Dried carrots can be used both in their original form and for cooking. For example, adding a pinch of carrots to broth or soup, you get quite full meal. In addition, the carrots, having straightened during heat treatment, will add to the food special taste and aroma.

- By preparing dried carrots for yourself, you will save a lot of time in the future when preparing food. After all, it will already be peeled, grated and, moreover, cooked.

The ability of carrots to be stored for a long time without loss of taste, its resistance to various kinds of microorganisms, mold and spoilage is called keeping quality. Keeping quality is determined by the content of a sufficient amount of sugar and fiber, as well as dry substances, which will prevent spoilage of the product.

The diameter of the core should be minimal, without bitterness and greenery, and the color of the core should be practically no different from the bulk of the pulp.

Fruits with a smooth, uniform surface are best suited for storage., it is better to select carrots of the same size. There should be no mechanical damage, cracks, or frozen areas.

Varieties suitable for this process

Do I need to do this before storing?

The opinion is clear that carrots must be dried and specially dried before harvesting.

Preparation

One of the effective long time is drying, especially in the absence of suitable conditions and storage facilities (,). Moreover, such processing will help preserve in the root crop maximum amount useful substances, vitamins and minerals and prevent destruction nutritional composition.

Attention! Carrots for drying are selected in the same way as for long-term storage - late or mid-ripening, with a high content of dry components, homogeneous pulp, without greens and coarsened core.

First, the fruits are freed from the tops by cutting them off and removing the green neck at the base.(you can find out more nuances about how to trim root crops). Next, each root crop must be carefully inspected for damage, rotten areas and cuts must be cut off. It is necessary to do this under running water; you can even use a hard sponge or brush.

The next step is peeling. If processing is to be done large quantity root vegetables, it is better to use a vegetable peeler - this will significantly speed up the process.

Before drying, the carrots will have to be blanched. To do this, boil water in a large container and immerse the fruits in it. After 15-20 minutes, pierce the carrots with a toothpick - it should go into the pulp with little effort. After heat treatment, cool the product under running water. cold water and pat dry with a towel. The duration of blanching depends on the size of the fruit - small ones “reach” earlier - in 12 minutes, large ones - in 20 minutes.

You can chop the root vegetable for drying arbitrarily - into cubes, circles, quarters, strips or grate. Drying raw carrots is also allowed, without blanching.

At home

Drying carrots can be carried out in two ways - natural and using heat from electrical appliances, for example, in an oven or electric dryer. In the first case, the procedure will be longer, but energy saving. The second method allows you to speed up drying significantly, but at the cost of electricity.

On air

Conducted over two weeks. Recipe for success - right choice drying area. Optimally - on garden plot or in a garden with a slight slope to the south. A lot of sunlight will help dry the vegetable faster.

Carrots are being prepared traditional way– , cleaned and cut. Pour into a single layer on a baking sheet, tray or long sieve and place in the sun. You will have to stir the workpiece periodically (every few days). After drying, the pieces are sorted out and any under-dried or contaminated pieces are removed.

Microwave

With help modern technology can be dried quickly and efficiently. A microwave of any power will do.

Advice! When drying in the microwave, you need to make sure that the water in the glass does not boil away.

In the oven

Oven drying is the most popular way to prepare carrots., since this can be done in the oven at home, preserving the vitamins.

Prepared and processed carrots are chopped randomly.
Prepare a baking sheet - it should be dry and clean.
Turn on the oven and heat it to 70 degrees.
Place carrots on a baking sheet in one layer. If the root vegetable is grated, the maximum permissible layer height is 1 cm.
The baking sheet with the vegetable is placed in the oven, the door is closed. If the oven is not convection, you can leave the door slightly open.
The carrots are left to dry for 6-8 hours, stirring and turning occasionally to remove moisture evenly.
The dried workpiece is cooled directly in the pan and stored.

During work oven Ensure adequate ventilation of the room - open a window or window for ventilation.

In an electric dryer

An electric dryer can also make carrot harvesting easier., acting as an alternative to the oven and microwave.

The process can take a long time - from 6 to 12 hours. This depends on the model of the electric dryer, its power, and the size of the carrot pieces. You should strictly follow the instructions for the device, setting the desired mode and duration.

Attention! You don’t have to stir the carrots during the process, but to ensure uniform heating, the trays should be swapped periodically.

Watch a video about drying carrots in an electric dryer:

Dried vegetable for tea

Few people know that carrots can be used to make delicious vitamin tea. You can also brew raw carrots, but It’s better to dry it using a certain step-by-step technology in the oven:

Rinse the root vegetable thoroughly under running water and remove the peel.
Grind and pour onto a baking sheet.
Preheat the oven to maximum temperature.
Place the carrots in the oven for 20 minutes, remove and cool the product.
Repeat the procedure twice more, remembering to mix the contents. Keep the door slightly open.

Conclusion

How to store dried carrots? After completing the drying process, all carrots need to be cooled well and poured into a common container for a day. This is done to ensure that the remaining moisture in the product is evenly distributed.

Dry glass containers, sealed tin and plastic, vacuum or cotton bags are suitable. It is better to choose a dark and dry place for storage.

The quality of storage depends on the tightness of the container - it must be tightly closed. Dried carrots can be stored for several months, up to one year.

Dried carrots are used for cooking healing drinks as an ingredient for cooking vegetable soups, meat stew, fish dishes, in casseroles, sauces, sweet and savory baked goods. The main thing is to choose the right raw materials and follow the technology for harvesting solar root crops.

Late autumn is the time for the last preparations for the winter. At autumn fairs there is an abundance of cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beets, onions and other vegetables, which form an important and significant part of every person’s diet.

Last year (at the end of winter - beginning of spring) I was faced with a lack of normal (not frozen or rotting) carrots in the nearest stores. It is difficult to imagine preparing the first courses without this root vegetable; it is noticeably lacking for the second course, to say nothing of my love for carrot juice.. It was very unusual and extremely unpleasant. I had to buy dried mixtures with carrots to season soups, and this turned out to be not a very pleasant burden on the family budget.

That is why dried carrots have become one of the most important products this fall. This was necessary, but the anticipation of the process was joyless... but in vain! - drying carrots for the winter turned out to be not difficult and did not take long. And, of course, the quality of the resulting product is much higher than what you buy in small bags in the store.

So, how to dry carrots at home?

We go to the autumn fair, where we buy carrots so nicely packaged in small nets. We will prepare in parts, fortunately, raw carrots it is stored well, especially if there is a cool room (in our case, a basement).

Carrot wash and clean from the peel. Using a vegetable peeler ( special knife for peeling vegetables) greatly simplifies and speeds up this process, especially if the carrots are large and smooth - then in general there is a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from the simplicity and speed.

Next you need carrots blanch, otherwise the carrots will quickly lose not only taste qualities, but also their own beneficial features. To do this, bring the water to a boil, put the carrots in boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of the carrots.
Carrots are dried in the oven, for example, without preliminary blanching, but this is possible, but not the best option drying carrots.

I gave carrots cool down yourself (of course, draining the water and removing it from the pan to increase the cooling speed), although I read that it should be quickly cooled under cold running water.

After the carrots have cooled, grate it on a coarse grater. You can also cut into circles up to 3 mm thick or into cubes - try to make them the same so that drying occurs more evenly.

We spread the grated carrots on all levels of the dryer (at first I tried to lay them out in a fairly thin layer and with gaps for air, but then I simply laid out the entire resulting volume on the racks, i.e. all the carrots that fit in the 3-liter pan during the cooking process laid on 5 levels of the dryer).

There was a fear that due to the density of the layers of grated carrots on the pallets, the drying would not be uniform, but no - the drying went well and took only 2 days.
No, no, don’t be alarmed, not a full 2 days. In total it turned out 6-7 hours at a temperature of 50-60 degrees. The first day I dried the carrots for 3-4 hours, changing the levels every hour, since the product dries faster on the bottom than on the upper levels. And also removing drops of moisture from the inside of the dryer lid. On the second day, I dried the carrots for about 3 hours, also rearranging the levels and stirring the already dried carrots a little.

When the consistency of the carrots became suitable (the carrots should become dry, but not crumbly into powder), I turned off the dryer, let the carrots cool for about half an hour and transferred everything into an 800 gram jar. It turned out to be "packed".

What a happy orange color dried carrots are! But don’t rush to cover it with a lid - let it stand for another day in a dry, warm place (covering it with gauze instead of a lid), so the carrots will probably dry out and be stored even better.

Total: I won’t say by weight (next time I’ll definitely weigh it (it turned out to be 1.5 kg)), but by volume from a 3-liter pan with large carrots came out 800 gram jar dried product.

How to store dried carrots?

Dried carrots can be stored for a very long time.
Store dried carrots in a dry, dark place in an airtight container. You can use both glass containers and paper or plastic bags.

Many housewives wonder: how to dry carrots at home and whether their benefits will be lost with this method of harvesting? To answer this question, it is necessary to tell more about such a useful root vegetable.

Carrots have a rich chemical composition, due to which it has a regulating effect on metabolism in human body. Carrots are rich in proteins and carbohydrates. The concentration of carbohydrates increases over time and depends on the degree of ripeness of the carrots.

The composition of the root vegetable is low in cellulose, which makes it possible to use it when following diets. The composition of carrots is abundant useful vitamins(B1, B2, B6, C) and a whole group of important minerals (potassium, sodium, calcium, phosphorus, iodine, iron and others). The root vegetable is especially rich in carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A.

The body's consumption of beneficial substances contained in root vegetables helps resist the development of various diseases. Carotene is rightfully considered the most important among these substances. Therefore, the consumption of carrots in food is of great value for human nutrition. winter time.

And here the problem of storing it arises. Storing root vegetables in winter has a negative impact on a number of useful components from the composition of carrots, and they are broken down as a result of the oxidative process of respiration. Some of the common storage methods healthy root vegetable are deep freezing and canning. It is a common belief that deep-frozen vegetables retain their properties better. useful composition, is not entirely true.

When making this type of product, quick freezing is used. The best way to preserve carrots for the winter is drying. Drying makes it possible to prevent or stop those processes of destruction of the nutritional composition that lead to a decrease nutritional value

orange root vegetable.

Natural drying of carrots

To the question of how to properly dry carrots, nutritionists have a clear answer.

The harvesting process can be carried out in two different ways: using the natural heat provided by the sun, and using heat obtained from electrical appliances.

The undeniable advantage of the second method, compared to the first, is a significantly shorter drying cycle. At home, the harvesting process consists of removing the liquid contained in the raw material by evaporating it using natural or artificial heat.

If the housewife decides to prepare carrots using sun drying, then she needs to know a number of rules. Most often, an open area that is well blown by the wind and accessible to sunlight, protected from possible harmful factors of human activity, is chosen for this purpose.

A summer cottage or veranda of a garden house is good for harvesting at home. It is advisable to choose the south side for this. The selected site should be free of dust. It will be useful to have a canopy next to the drying area so that the dried carrots are not damaged by rain. During the drying process, carrots must be stirred to check readiness. The finished product is packaged in wooden or(cotton bags will also work) and store in dark room. Tea containers are good for storing carrots.

Artificial drying

Another of the available and quick ways winter harvesting Carrots are dried in an electric dryer. This method widely uses infrared radiation. It has the ability to penetrate into the depths of the dried raw material by 6-12 millimeters, which is enough to produce carrots at home, in which it is not so split useful in winter carotene.

Carrots for drying should be used clean. To do this, the raw materials must be washed and peeled and cut or grated as the housewife wishes. You can grate it on a coarse grater, or you can cut it into cubes. Dried carrots are simply worth their weight in gold for our diet. This is primarily due to the fact that it is rich in the substance carotene.

How to dry carrots in an electric dryer is usually indicated in the operating instructions for this electrical appliance. Carrots take a long time to dry due to the presence of a large amount of moisture in them.

The root crop is dried at a temperature of about 60-70 degrees for about 6 hours. It may take several cycles to dry completely. Their quantity during electric drying is selected individually, so the process requires constant supervision.

Dried carrots can be used in household, cooking various soups, pies and other preparations, and even when brewing tea. It can be used for food at any time of the year if storage conditions are strictly observed.