Easy Fermented Carrots

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These crisp and slightly sour fermented carrots make for a delicious and gut-healthy snack! I’ll show you how to make them right at home.

In our household, foods like these lacto-fermented carrots, fermented cauliflower, sauerkraut, yogurt, and milk kefir make their way to our table often.

Fermented Carrots Benefits

We try to add a little fermented or cultured food into our diets almost every day to help with our gut health! They contain live and active cultures that help protect the gut biome.

Probiotic foods can be fairly expensive to purchase at the store, but many of these foods can be made right at home with a few supplies for a fraction of the cost!

Fermenting is also a great way to extend the life of produce that you buy or grow.

Did you know you can also ferment foods in honey for a sweet and special treat? Try my honey fermented cranberries.

What is the difference between fermenting and pickling?

Fermenting is a bit different than pickling. While both fermented and pickled foods take on a sour flavor, pickling achieves this with vinegar. The food is shelf stable with no live and active cultures.

The sourness in lacto-fermented foods, on the other hand, is caused by lactic acid bacteria, a by-product of fermentation. The food is rich in live and active cultures that can support the body.

Fermented Carrots Recipe Notes

We enjoy these carrots with no added seasonings, but you can get creative! You may want to experiment adding peeled garlic cloves, fresh herbs, mustard seed, or peppercorns.

You can cut your carrots into sticks like I did here, or you can slice or shred them instead!

There is no need to sanitize your jar and lids unless they’ve come in contact with mold in the past. A good wash in soapy dish water and a thorough rinse should do the trick.

How to Make Fermented Carrots (Step-by-Step Instructions)

Step 1 – Add Carrots and Water to Jar

Place a clean quart size (32-ounce) wide-mouth mason jar onto a digital kitchen scale. Tare the scale to zero so you can weigh the carrots and water that you will add into the jar in grams.

Arrange carrot sticks or slices neatly into the jar up to the shoulder so you can fit in as many pieces as possible.

You can do the same process with any size jar as long as the mouth of the jar will fit the wight and lids you have.

Pour room temperature unchlorinated water up to the shoulder of the jar. Then make note of the final weight of the carrots with the water.

Step 2 – Add Sea Salt to Create a Brine

Multiply the total weight by 2.2% (.022) to determine how many grams of salt to add. So for example, if the contents of jar weighs 783g, you will add 17g salt.

Tare the scale to zero to weigh in the salt, or weigh the salt separately and add it in.

Stir the salt into the water as much as you can, but don’t worry if it isn’t incorporated at this point.

Step 3 – Ferment Carrots

Press a clean glass fermentation weight onto the top of the carrot pieces to hold them under the brine.

Wipe the edges of the jar with a washcloth to remove any debris, then screw on a rim fitted with an airlock lid (also called a pickle pipe). This will allow gasses to escape during fermentation.

Set the jar in a dark cupboard at room temperature for 3-5 days or until the carrots are tangy to your liking. The warmer your house is, the quicker the process will go.

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