I buy & eat a lot of baby-cut carrots. Yes, they’re stupidly overpriced, but they’re a handy & healthful snack.
After a package has been in the colder part of the fridge for a few days, the carrots often seem a bit slimy. They taste fine, but the feel is off-putting. I end up rinsing them or half-assedly wiping them off with a paper towel before eating. Which feels stupidly fussy & defeats the whole point of prefab grab-and-munch snacks.
Hence the Big Question: Is the slime, for lack of a better word, just condensation softening the piece’s surface; some carrot juice leaking out of the piece; or the result of some decay process, a biofilm of not-so-good gunk I’d actually be better off rinsing off or wiping off?
Yes, it’s the onset of decay. Unpeeled carrots last longer because the outer rind is protective. When they get a white “blush” it’s the outer surface becoming dehydrated. If you peel and cut your own carrots the same thing will happen in a few days.
That said, a healthy person with an intact immune system can withstand a small amount of slimy baby carrots, they won’t kill you, just as you can eat stale bread or bruised bananas or other less than perfect food.
I also eat a lot of baby carrots, and I hate that slime. I tried eating them anyway, but now I just can’t. I have to throw them away. I go through three pounds of carrots a week, so I know it’s not because they are in the fridge too long; I think they were at the store too long. When I buy them now, I pinch one through the plastic trying to detect the slime.
For a couple of years I was always taking baby carrots to work for a morning snack, and I have never once encountered said slime. Do you keep them in one of the bottom crisper drawers?
Seems simple enough - vegetables tend to get a little (and then a lot) slimy as they go bad; it’s no surprise that factory processed ones (such as pre-peeled/cut, so-called “baby” carrots) will do so faster.
I don’t like that they’re sealed inside a bag with a little puddle of water. I tend to look for the driest looking bunch inside the bag and then at home, poke a hole in it to drain a little before putting in the fridge. If used within 3 days or so, they don’t get the white film, but either way I prefer that to them swimming in all that water.
I recently tried using those baby carrots as a snack during my new calorie counting endeavor, and I’ll have to find something else. They made me even more hungry and I was more desperate for a meal when I got home from work than if I had skipped lunch and not eaten at all. I’ll still use them as part of a balanced meal, but for me, man that was a mistake. Anyone else get hungrier after eating them plain? I’ll have to try again with some peanut or almond butter maybe.
Mine either get slimy or completely dry, and I have no idea why. I think a lot of times they are already close to bad while sitting at the store and the dates on the package don’t mean much. I just realized I don’t know why I even buy baby carrots or what the point is, anyway.
That’s probably because carrots are sort of hgh in sugar, if I recall correctly. They satisfy the need to chew, but do little else for you. If you really like them, eat them alongside some avocado, cottage cheese or peanut butter. It’s best to snack on a little protein vs just carrots.
That’s probably because carrots are sort of hgh in sugar, if I recall correctly. They satisfy the need to chew, but do little else for you. If you really like them, eat them alongside some avocado, cottage cheese or peanut butter. It’s best to snack on a little protein vs just carrots.
Believe me, my standards for eating imperfect food would make most folks here cringe and make the real scaredy-cat germophobes vomit in raw fear.
Thanks all. Glad to see I’m not alone in noticing this and in being suspicious of it. IMO it’s far more gross-feeling than it is fear-inducing.
The real answer for me is to buy fewer less far in advance and therefore eat them sooner before they start weeping and becoming an active growth medium.
The slime comes from the breakdown of surface cells ruptured by the peeling/cutting/finishing process that generates that semi-standardized “baby carrot” shape.
If you wash it off, or even more so, if you repeel them, you get to a fresh layer of non-decayed cells so yes, to some extent it’s removable.
Of course, eventually, you get things like mold and fungus which penetrate deeper into the carrot but that would be even more unappetizing.
:p)