Fermented carrots are one of the easiest ferments to start with: carrots, salt, water and a jar. Covered in a 2–3% salt brine and kept at room temperature, they turn tangy and slightly fizzy in about a week while staying crunchy. The recipe below gives the salt by weight, because spoon measurements of salt vary a lot. Further down you’ll find the spiralized ginger-and-turmeric batch we made and photographed in 2016.
How Carrot Fermentation Works
Salt draws juice from the carrots and holds back spoilage organisms, while salt-tolerant lactic acid bacteria that are naturally on the vegetables turn their sugars into lactic acid. As the brine gets more acidic, it becomes cloudy and the carrots turn sour. Keeping everything under the brine matters: bacteria that do the fermenting don’t need air, while the molds you want to avoid do (National Center for Home Food Preservation).
Getting the Salt Right
For a 2% brine, dissolve 10 g of salt in 500 ml of water; for 3%, use 15 g. That’s the range most vegetable ferments use: 2% ferments a little faster and tastes milder, 3% is saltier, slower and a little crunchier. Use non-iodized salt (sea, kosher or pickling salt) and weigh it – a tablespoon of fine salt can weigh twice as much as a tablespoon of flaky salt.
| Water | 2% brine | 3% brine |
|---|---|---|
| 250 ml (1 cup) | 5 g | 7.5 g |
| 500 ml (about 2 cups) | 10 g | 15 g |
| 1 litre (about 4 cups) | 20 g | 30 g |
How Long to Ferment Carrots
- Days 1–3: little to see at first, then the brine turns cloudy and small bubbles appear.
- Days 4–7: the carrots become tangy. Start tasting from day 4.
- After 7–14 days: more sour and slightly softer. Thin or shredded carrots get there faster than sticks.
Move the jar to the fridge when you like the flavor. Cold slows fermentation, and the carrots keep for months as long as they stay under the brine and you use clean utensils.
Flavor Ideas
- Dill and garlic: fresh dill, 3–4 garlic cloves and a few peppercorns.
- Ginger and turmeric: slices of fresh ginger and turmeric – or see our fermented ginger carrots.
- Spicy: sliced jalapeño or a dried chili, onion and cumin seeds.
- Spiced: cumin, coriander and fennel seeds with a pinch of chili flakes.
- Our 2016 mix: spiralized carrots with onion, spring onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, caraway, chili flakes and dried herbs (below).
Troubleshooting
- White film on top: a flat, smooth film is usually kahm yeast. Skim it off and make sure everything is under the brine. Fuzzy, raised or colored growth (green, black, pink, orange) is mold: throw the batch away (NCHFP).
- Soft carrots: too warm, too long, too little salt or old carrots. Use fresh, firm carrots, 2–3% brine and 65–75°F (18–24°C).
- No bubbles: it may be cool or just slow. Taste it: if it’s getting sour, it’s fermenting.
- Too salty: rinse the carrots before eating, and use 2% next time.
- Bad smell: sour and pickle-like is normal; rotten or putrid isn’t – discard it.
Carrot Nutrition
Raw carrots provide, per 100 g, 41 kcal, 2.8 g of fiber, 320 mg of potassium and 8,285 µg of beta-carotene (835 µg of vitamin A as RAE), according to USDA (FoodData Central). Fermentation doesn’t turn carrots into a different food – it adds live lactic acid bacteria (if you don’t heat them) and salt, so count the brine toward your sodium.
How to Use Fermented Carrots
- Straight from the jar as a snack, or on a cheese board.
- Chopped into salads, grain bowls, slaws, tacos and sandwiches.
- Blended into dressings, or stirred into hummus.
- Added to hot dishes at the end, off the heat, if you want to keep the live bacteria.
More: the best vegetables to ferment, fermented vs pickled, India’s black-carrot drink kanji and how to store fermented foods. Another sweet root that ferments well is sweet potato.
