Preserving More Produce

It was predominantly extra large sweet potatoes, celery, and carrots, with a smaller amount but still significant quantities of clementines, beets, and purple onions.

I did not have room in my fridge to store all of that produce, and fortunately it was mostly in very good condition, so it was great for fermented produce. (When I get my produce from the reduced rack, unfortunately, it usually is not good enough quality to be used for fermentation- it’ll likely mold if I attempt to ferment it, so when I have good quality produce, I am extra tempted to ferment what I can.)

I chopped up some beets and am fermenting them into beet kvass. a probiotic beet based drink.

I am making fermented Moroccan style carrots using this recipe (only with no oil, since I’ve since learned that it is a bad idea for fermented), and then I pickled celery three different ways. Once was stalks in brine with homemade Cajun seasoning. I thought that might taste extra awesome since celery is a standard ingredient in Cajun dishes. I made one of celery leaves seasoned like kimchi, with ginger, garlic, and got pepper flakes, and the other was just super simple, in brine with caraway seeds.

I dehydrated a bunch of produce as well, and am still dehydrating more. Celery leaves got dehydrated, separately from celery stalks. I dehydrated both cubed sweet potatoes and sliced sweet potatoes, and will be making more dehydrated sweet potato chips. I dehydrated cubed carrots and also sliced purple onions, which I will then use as a spice, and also grind to make onion powder.

I still plan on dehydrating more carrots and sweet potatoes, but essentially it’ll be more of the same of what I already did.

It’s nice that by preserving this produce, I am able to lengthen its life so that once my fridge is no longer packed to the gills, I’ll still be able to have and enjoy this produce.

I love food preservation!


Have you done any food preservation lately? What was it?