How to Store Carrots for Consumption Over Winter

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I looove carrots. Eating them raw, by themselves, with dip, cooked, in salads, roasted; they’re my favourite vegetable. I also try to plant enough food that I can store away during the winter months to make it over the colder part of the year. While my carrots don’t last from September until June, they can last pretty long, if stored correctly.

The easiest way, and the only way I store my carrots for fresh eating: in my fridge. They stay crispy and crunchy like you just pulled them from the garden. You can also freeze them (my method if I run out of room in the fridge) or can them. I, personally, don’t like canned carrots so I haven’t gone back to that method since I tried it years ago.

Step 1. Harvest your carrots. Washing off any mud and cut off the tops (you can actually eat the carrot greens in a salad or use as a form of ‘parsley’. They will be a bit bitter).

Step 2. Make sure your carrots are dry before beginning to pack them away. Place vegetables, loosely, into vegetable bags. These are the ones with the holes and allow them to breathe. If you do not have any Ziploc vegetable bags (I swear they get harder and harder every year to find) just make your own! Place bag on a cutting board and have at ‘er with a knife, creating tiny pinpricks of holes all over the bag.

Greenish tip: save any of your carrot bags from the grocery store; they have holes in them just like the ziplocs. Instead of using more plastic, you can reuse these guys! Provided you haven’t ripped them open like I do.

Make sure that you don’t fill up the bags too full, else the carrots won’t be able to breathe and they can get mouldy. Ew.

Step 3. Place in vegetable crisper.

If you don’t have a lot of carrots to store, or want to slow down on your use of plastic bags, you can also place washed carrots in a tupperware filled with water and cover. Place in the fridge and enjoy crunchy carrots for weeks. They will not last as long as the ones in the bags (I’ve had carrots in properly ventilated bags in the fridge last me until late winter!), but will stay nice and crisp, fresh and crunchy. Remember to change out the water every few days.

If your bagged carrots start get a little rubbery, usually after a couple of months, place them into a tupperware filled with water to bring back their crunch.