Minnesota Cooking: Using a Salad Shooter to Grate Carrots

I like carrots. I like the sweet flavor. I like the different ways the grocery store has them for sale. I have purchased carrots mixed with lettuce, grated by themselves, as carrot coins, as baby carrots, you name it. But yesterday, I purchased a five pound bag of carrots at a warehouse store.

Yes. Five pounds. Which means that I need to freeze some and use some up right away.

I have had the Salad Shooter for a while now and had not even taken it out of the box. It's from an auction at my place of employment. The proceeds from the auction went to a charity in our town, Relay for Life.

It was well worth the money that I had to give for it. I think I paid ten dollars for it, but like I mentioned already, it's been sitting on a shelf, unused, until I got that bag of carrots.

First, I washed it in hot water with detergent. It was easy to assemble. It amounts to a hopper, a plunger, some blades, a blade holder, and the motor. There is an on/off switch.

I was searching around the kitchen for a bowl to catch my carrots. I also got out a box of Ziplock baggies. I was going to empty the bowl into the baggie when I had enough to start filling the bag.

I was musing about the bowl and wished out loud to myself that I could just directly place the carrots in the bag.

Wait. What?

I looked around. I knew that I had a bag of rubber bands really close at hand, since my hubby has a bag sitting there to bind his beard.

Bingo.

I got a rubber band and placed the mouth of the bag around the exit port of the Salad Shooter. I closed the bag onto the mouth and snapped a rubber band onto the bag so it wouldn't slip off. It worked very well.

I have been eating handfuls of carrots on my sandwiches lately. A few pieces of cheese, some butter and a handful of carrots, and voila, a nicely-flavored, crunchy sandwich. Yummy!

I ended up with two gallon-size bags of carrots after grating a five pound bag. How did it all begin? Well. I set up the salad shooter and cut the ends off the first carrot and peeled it. Then, I inserted the carrot into the hopper. The carrot was forced through the bottom of the hopper through a grater blade.

The grated carrots fell off into a gallon ziplock bag that I had closed around the exit hole and had rubber banded it so it could not fall off. Other than touching the carrot when I peeled it and placed it in the hopper, I didn't have to do anything else. I watched them grate and fall inside the bag. It was the greatest moment of my day!