Have you ever purchased carrots that are rubbery, limp and droopy? Have carrots that you store in your refrigerator lost their crispness and crunchiness?
Don’t despair, your produce is not ready for the trash can or compost pile. You can rehydrate limp carrots and return them to their crisp and crunchy original condition.
Watch the video at the bottom of this page as Steve demonstrates how easy it is to fix limp carrots.
Why Do Carrots Get Rubbery and Limp?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- 1 Why Do Carrots Get Rubbery and Limp?
- 2 How Carrots are Sold
- 3 How We Buy Carrots
- 4 Why We Bought Limp Carrots
- 5 Are Rubbery Carrots Safe To Eat?
- 6 How To Rehydrate Limp, Rubbery Carrots
Carrots are a root vegetable and consist of 88 percent water. By comparison, cucumbers are 96 percent water. Carrots get limp when their water content reduces through evaporation.
How Refrigerators Hurt Carrots
Refrigerators are designed to be frost-free. This means that they have a fan that is constantly circulating air throughout the refrigerator compartment.
This fan that keeps frost from forming also removes moisture from food. That’s why bread dries out quickly in a refrigerator … and so do carrots and other produce.
How Carrots are Sold
Most often, carrots are sold in the supermarket packaged in plastic bags. The bags keep moisture in and for the most part prevent the carrots from dehydrating. However, carrots are also sold loose in bulk bins and some stores even sell them loose with the greens still on top.
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How We Buy Carrots
We often buy carrots in five-pound plastic bags. But we really like to buy loose or bulk carrots because they are less expensive.
One store in our area regularly advertises bulk carrots for 33 cents per pound so we usually get Walmart to match that price. We can hand-select the carrots that have no cracks in them. We also try to select skinnier carrots.
Why would we want skinny carrots?
We’ve discovered that usually, the skinnier a carrot is, the higher the sugar content it will contain.
This is why “baby carrots” taste so sweet. The producers select only skinnier carrots, scrape them clean, rinse them and cut them into bite-sized chunks.
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Why We Bought Limp Carrots
Because we shop for groceries two times each month, and often we do it at night, our selection of bulk carrots is often limited.
Bulk carrots aren’t stored in plastic bags but are displayed in an open-air bin. This tends to allow them to dry out. At the end of the night, the carrots that are left can be limp.
We don’t worry about it anymore because we’ve found a simple solution – we have learned to rehydrate limp carrots.
Are Rubbery Carrots Safe To Eat?
A blogger over at Leaf.tv says, “If carrots have turned rubbery and soft, they’re going bad. At this stage, you can still eat them, but it probably won’t be that great in terms of taste and texture. …As long as you wash them or cut off the dark spots, they should be safe to eat.”
Rubbery Carrots aren’t “going bad,” they are just drying out, and becoming dehydrated. As long as there isn’t any mold or other types of decay, they are safe to eat. But you may want to follow the instructions below to restore their crispness.
How To Rehydrate Limp, Rubbery Carrots
To rehydrate droopy, listless carrots we simply fill a long plastic container with filtered water and place the carrots in the container. We leave the container sitting on the counter, although you could put it in the refrigerator also.
After a few hours, we check the carrots. If they are firm enough, we take them out of the water; otherwise, we leave them in longer, sometimes overnight.
When the carrots are rehydrated, we dry them off and store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.
This is such a simple fix and it works not only on carrots but also on celery, asparagus and even heads of lettuce.
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In this video, Steve demonstrates the simple method to restore crispness to our dehydrated, limp carrots.
