Dried Carrot Strips

1.Customer Needs

Our client is a food processing and distribution company specializing in vegetables. With the growing popularity of healthy eating, dehydrated vegetables, as a convenient, nutritious, and long-lasting food ingredient, have seen increasing market demand. Recognizing the huge potential of dried carrot strips in applications such as soup mixes, ready-to-eat meals, and healthy snacks, the client decided to expand its production line.

The client’s core needs were clear and urgent:

Quality First: The dried carrot strips must retain their natural color, nutrients, and sweetness, while preventing discoloration and nutrient loss due to oxidation.

Efficiency and Capacity: The drying process must be efficient and stable to meet increasing order volumes, enabling continuous, large-scale production.

Appearance and Rehydration: The final product must have uniform size and shape, be thoroughly dried, and rehydrate well for easy use by downstream manufacturers.

Ease of Operation: The equipment should be easy to operate, with simple temperature and humidity controls, minimizing operator skill requirements and ensuring consistent product quality.

To address these needs, we developed a customized, scientific drying solution for the client.

①Drying Process

To achieve the desired high-quality product, we recommended and guided the client in using a heat pump dryer, and developed a detailed drying process:

Pre-treatment: Fresh, firm carrots are selected, washed, and then cut into uniform strips using a specialized slicer to ensure consistent thickness and drying time.

Tray Preparation: The cut carrot strips are evenly spread on the drying trays, approximately 1-2 cm thick, ensuring adequate spacing for even heat penetration.

Drying Stages:

Initial Stage (High-Temperature Blanching): Set the temperature to 65°C – 70°C for approximately 1 hour. This stage rapidly removes surface moisture and inhibits polyphenol oxidase activity, a key step in preserving beta-carotene and preventing discoloration.

Main Drying Stage (Constant Rate Drying): Adjust the temperature to 60°C – 65°C and maintain for approximately 5-6 hours. This stage involves significant water evaporation.  Maintaining a stable temperature ensures efficient and continuous moisture removal, while preventing overheating that could cause sugar crystallization or caramelization.

Final drying stage (low-temperature finishing): Reduce the temperature to 55°C – 60°C and continue drying for approximately 2-3 hours. At this stage, most of the moisture has evaporated.  The lower temperature during this final drying helps thoroughly dry the remaining moisture to the target moisture content (typically below 8%), while preserving color and nutritional value.

Cooling and packaging: After drying, remove the shredded carrots and allow them to cool to room temperature in a cool, dry environment.  Immediately seal-pack them to prevent moisture absorption.

This precise process yields bright orange-red, well-shaped, and sweet-tasting shredded carrots, perfectly meeting the customer’s stringent quality requirements.

The successful implementation of this carrot drying project not only solved the customer’s production technology bottleneck, significantly improving product quality, but also laid a solid foundation for their entry into the dehydrated vegetable market. The efficient drying process also dramatically increased their production capacity, meeting the demands of market expansion.

We sincerely wish our client continued success with this high-quality shredded carrot product, expanding their sales channels, gaining consumer trust and preference, and achieving long-term success and a bright future in the healthy food industry!

We also look forward to deepening our collaboration with our client, exploring further possibilities in vegetable processing, and bringing more high-quality, healthy products to the market.