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Making All Natural Carrot Chips For A Healthy Snack

I made all natural dehydrated carrot chips for a healthy alternative to potato chips for our family. We like to snack in the evenings but most commercially available snacks are either very unhealthy or too expensive for us to buy.

 

When we got a bunch of fresh carrots from a neighbor I immediately got the idea of making carrot chips.

 

I first removed the carrot tops of the largest carrots in the bunch. Nothing goes to waste on our homestead and the carrot tops go to the chickens. They love the fresh greens. Any kitchen scraps that do not go to the birds go into our compost bin to be used as garden fertilizer for next year.

 

Fresh carrots for carrot chips

 

 

 

I then washed the carrots outside under running water. I decided not to wash them indoors to keep the dirt out of the kitchen sink and drains. I did not remove the skin.

 

Inside I used a slicer and cut all the carrots up into thin slices. This is a fast and easy tool that we have on hand but you could use a knife and do it yourself.

 

Next I laid out the carrots in a single layer on the drying racks. I have 9 large square drying racks from an old dehydrator my mom had when we were little. When it stopped working she kept it fortunately and I got the trays. These are perfect for my homestead dehydrating projects. We use the oven pilot light, sun or the heat of the wood stove to dry our foods.

 

making all natural carrot chips

 

 

 

 

Once I had all the drying racks filled up I took them to the oven. Our oven is gas so the pilot light is always burning. This is free waste energy so we use it to dry out herbs and vegetables without using any other source of energy. I slid the trays into the oven to dry.

 

After a few days we found something interesting. The carrots had curled up into flower shaped patterns. Melanie found them pretty. They tasted good but still were a bit rubbery. I gave it a few more days to be sure they were fully dried out.

 

When done I pulled them all out of the oven and put them into a pot so I can later use the vacuum sealer and make smaller portions for later use.

 

We can use our carrot chips as snacks, or in soups or cooking during the cold winter months.





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Troy Reid

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