Ingredients
- 1.8 kg of carrots, peeled
- 1 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2 1/2 tablespoons cumin
- 1 1/4 tablespoons dried parsley flakes
- 2 teaspoons salt
Instructions
- Choose fat carrots over slender ones. A wide round has more surface to carry the spice paste, and the thin tip of a small carrot burns to nothing while the rest is still drying.
- Peel and slice them into coins as thin as you can manage. A carrot is dense and holds its water in the core, so the difference between a crunchy coin and a chewy one is a fraction of a millimetre.
- Whisk the oil, honey, cumin, cayenne, parsley and salt into a loose paste. It needs to be thin enough to brush; neat honey drags and leaves the spice sitting in blobs.
- Lay the coins on the trays first and paint them in place. Tossing them in a bowl coats both faces, and a coated underside glues itself to the mesh.
- Paint the upper face only and leave the underside bare. That bare side is where the water leaves, and it is why these come out crisp rather than sticky.
- Dry at 52 °C for 8 hours. The low setting is deliberate — honey darkens quickly and cumin turns acrid when it is held hot.
- Take one off and wait a minute before biting it. A warm coin is always softer than the same coin cold, and the test that matters is whether it cracks between your teeth rather than bending.
- Store them in a tin somewhere cool for six weeks. Honey and oil both pull the crunch back out of these in a humid kitchen, so a silica sachet in the tin earns its place over summer.
Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 520 kcal | 148 kcal |
| Protein | 3.9 g | 1.1 g |
| Fat | 41.1 g | 11.6 g |
| saturated | 5.6 g | 1.6 g |
| Carbohydrate | 29.4 g | 8.3 g |
| sugars | 21.4 g | 6.1 g |
| Fibre | 9.9 g | 2.8 g |
| Sodium | 834 mg | 236 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
