how to freeze carrot flowers June 16, 2009

I had to get to work really early today, so no bento blog. >_< But instead, I’m going to show you how to make bento making less hectic in a busy morning.

I’ve done “how to make vegetable flowers” before, but it’s a time consuming process, especially in the morning. I used to buy baby carrots, because I didn’t have to cut it into a small circle which is a good size for flowers in bento, and they last longer than regular carrots. But baby carrots can be expensive, and I didn’t like the taste of baby carrots. (It tasted… “processed”?) Then I thought I should just buy regular carrots, and prepare it when I have time.

1. Slice a carrot and make as many as flowers you want. See “how to make vegetable flowers.” I’ve been using a diamond shaped cookie cutter. It makes it so much easier to make flowers. I just trim it to make smaller flowers. This time, I cut out a lot of different kinds of flowers and stars using cutters.

Of course, I saved the scraps from this and used them in spaghetti meat sauce. 🙂

Ta-da!

2. Put water in a pot, bring it to a boil. Then, put the carrot flowers in it, let it boil for about 1 minutes. (depending how big each flower is)

3. Drain water, and plunge them into cold water for 1 1/2-2 minutes. (You can add ice if you have any)

4. Take the carrot flowers out, and dry them really well with a paper towel.

5. When they’re dry, place them on a plastic sheet. Make sure the flowers aren’t touching each other.

6. I put them in an air tight tupperware container but you can put them in a ziploc too. (If you’re putting them in a ziploc, make sure the flowers don’t get shifted and touch each other.)

These little cute carrot flowers are now ready to be frozen!

Step 2 & 3 is called “blanching”, and it removes enzymes from carrots, and preserves its color.
Of course you can prepare other vegetables in the same way. But each vegetable has different “blanching time”, so make sure you check a website like this for a reference.

Now you’re ready to sprinkle pretty and nutritious orange flowers to brighten up your bento!

How to freeze carrot flowers on my flickr (There are more pictures!)

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

If you have any questions about any of my how-to’s, please feel free to leave a comment or email me!