Pickled carrots
Sweet-sour carrot coins with mustard and celery seed — a bright lunchbox pickle from the roots that will not all fit in the cold room.
Makes
About 4 × 500 ml (pint) jars
Active time
45 minutes
Total
1½ hours, plus 12–24 hours cooling
Before you start
What keeps this jar safe
- Carrots are low-acid; this brine is unusually strong (5½ cups vinegar to 1 cup water) and that ratio is the whole safety case. Do not add water to soften it.
- Half-cook the carrots in the brine (hot pack) — the tested 15 minutes assumes hot carrots going into the jar.
- Pints only; no time was established for quarts.
- Two headspaces: carrots to 2.5 cm from the rim, liquid to 1.25 cm. Carrots above the liquid darken and soften.
This follows NCHFP: Pickled Carrots. Quantities, acid and times are theirs; do not scale the vegetables without scaling everything, and do not change the vinegar, lemon juice or processing time.
Ingredients
- 1.25 kg (2¾ lb) peeled carrots — about 1.6 kg (3½ lb) as pulled
- 1.375 L (5½ cups) white distilled vinegar (5%)
- 250 ml (1 cup) water
- 400 g (2 cups) sugar
- 10 ml (2 teaspoons) canning salt
- 40 ml (8 teaspoons) mustard seed — 2 teaspoons per jar
- 20 ml (4 teaspoons) celery seed — 1 teaspoon per jar
Processing
- Jars
- 500 ml (pint)
- Headspace
- 1.25 cm (½ inch) of liquid over carrots packed to 2.5 cm (1 inch)
- Time at 0–300 m (0–1,000 ft)
- 15 min
- Higher up
- 20 min at 300–1,800 m (1,001–6,000 ft), 25 min above 1,800 m (6,000 ft).
Method
- 1
Set 4 washed 500 ml jars to heat in the canner and wash the lids. Scrub, peel and wash the carrots again — a child can peel the fat ones — and cut them into rounds about 1.25 cm (½ inch) thick.
- 2
Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a large pot, bring to a boil and boil gently 3 minutes.
- 3
Add the carrots, bring back to a boil, then lower to a simmer until they are half-cooked, about 10 minutes.
- 4
Put 2 teaspoons mustard seed and 1 teaspoon celery seed in the bottom of each hot jar.
- 5
Fill the jars with hot carrots to 2.5 cm (1 inch) from the rim, then ladle in the hot liquid to 1.25 cm (½ inch) from the rim. Free bubbles with a chopstick and top up, wipe the rims with a damp paper towel, centre the lids and screw the bands on fingertip-tight.
- 6
Lower into the canner with at least 5 cm (2 inches) of water over the lids, bring to a full rolling boil and process 15 minutes at 0–300 m.
- 7
Turn off the heat, uncover, wait 5 minutes and lift the jars onto a towel. Leave 12–24 hours, check the seals, and wait 3–5 days before opening the first jar.
Keeps: 12 months in a cool dark cupboard. Refrigerate after opening and eat within a month.
Variations: Mixed orange, yellow and purple carrots make a jar worth giving away. For sticks rather than coins, keep them the same thickness and the same half-cooking time.
Tested source: NCHFP: Pickled Carrots. Checked October 2026. If a jar did not seal, refrigerate it and use it within a few days. Never taste anything from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting or smells wrong — when in doubt, throw it out without tasting.
The crop
Carrots: when to pick, how to store, what else to make →
Carrots are best not put up at all: a cold room or a mulched row keeps them crisp into spring with no work. For jars, carrots are a low-acid vegetable and must be pressure-canned — 25 minutes for 500 ml jars and 30 for litres at 10 lb on a weighted gauge at sea level — never water-bathed, because boiling water does not reach the temperature that kills botulism spores. Pickled carrots are a different thing: the tested NCHFP and Bernardin recipes carry enough 5% vinegar to go in a boiling-water canner, so follow one exactly and don’t water the brine down. Freezing is good for cooking carrots if you blanch first (2 minutes for slices and sticks, 5 for small whole roots); unblanched carrots turn rubbery and lose flavour within weeks. Dried carrot shreds are fine for soup.
More for carrots
- Pressure canning
Carrots, pressure canned
For the carrots that will not fit in the cold room: sweet, soft, and ready for soup, stew or a toddler’s plate in a minute.
About 9 × 500 ml (pint) jars from 5 kg (11 lb) of topped carrots, or 7 × 1 L (quart) jars from 8 kg (17½ lb) · 1 hour active
The recipe → - Pickling
Home-style pickled jalapeños
Taqueria-style jalapeño strips with carrot and onion in a plain vinegar brine — the tested, lime-free way to put up a hot-pepper glut.
About 6 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1 hour active
The recipe →