Philip Meeker, a chef and food educator at Brightseed, shares a healthy way to pickle vegetables. Pickled and fermented vegetables are packed with probiotics, which help replenish and balance the bacteria in your gut. Good gut health is important for maintaining a healthy immune system, combating obesity and staving off gastrointestinal diseases. 

“We’re making pickled carrots,” Meeker says. “Not with vinegar, but with salt and water. The way our ancestors used to make it. It helps you stay healthy and is also a delicious condiment for any meal.”

Step One: Cut the tops off of the carrots.

“We’re not going to worry about peeling them,” Meeker says. “The peel actually has a lot of healthy nutrients to it. So we just cut off the tops nice and simple.”

Step Two: Put the carrots into the pickling jar and add aromatics.

“Aromatics are a great way to make your pickles taste more interesting,” Meeker says. “But we don’t want to overpower the vegetable. I usually do a little clove of garlic cut in half, a piece of a shallot, some cloves, a little bit of fennel and just a pinch of coriander. This is fast, and it will just add flavor to it.”

To learn more about the fermentation process, click this image: 

Step Three: Place the pickling jar on a food scale to determine the water to salt ratio.

“This is the only complex part of the entire recipe,” Meeker says. “We take the weight with our scale. We add our water, so we can just weigh how much water we’re putting in it. Once we have the weight of the water, which is just 300 grams even, we calculate for 3%. Three percent of 300 grams would be 9 grams. So you put in 9 grams of salt.”

Step Four: Screw on the lid. Shake it up. Put the jar in the refrigerator, and one month later you will have pickled carrots!

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