How to Shred Carrots

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Knowing how to shred carrots is an essential skill for any home cook. Learn how to do it and you’ll quickly see how easy it is.

shredded carrots on a cutting board with a cheese grater in the background.

There are many different ways to use shredded carrots – garnish a salad, add into soups, stir fry, carrot cake, and more.

You can buy pre shredded carrots in the store, but it’s cheaper to do the shredding yourself. Plus, fresh grated carrots smell so good and actually taste like carrots.

Carrots are filled with vitamin a and shredded carrots are a great way to add more of this vegetable into recipes.

Ingredients

grater and carrots on top of cutting board.

Raw carrots – If you are trying to shred baby carrots, you can definitely still shred them, it will just take more effort to do. Using long, fresh carrots makes it go faster.

Equipment

The equipment you need to shred carrots is minimal – all you need is a grater, sometimes also called a cheese grater and a small, sharp knife..

I find using a box grater is my favorite type of handheld grater. It just seems to be more stable and work really well.

I also like to work on a cutting board when shredding carrots. It’s a large, flat surface. If I don’t have access to my cutting board for some reason, you can use a large plate or pan. Just be aware that if the plate isn’t totally flat you do have the risk of cracking it with the force going down onto it.

You can use a food processor with the grater attachment if you prefer or have a ton of carrots to shred.

How to Shred Carrots

In our household we prefer to wash our carrots really well and not peel them. We like the added nutrients in the carrot skin and tend to use either organic carrots or carrots we’ve grown in our garden so we don’t have to worry too much about pesticides.

If you want to peel them, use a vegetable peeler and peel the carrots before shredding them.

Cut off the tip off the small end of the carrot. This will help make a flat end. You can also cut off the end on the larger side if you want, although you can also just stop grating the carrot before you reach the end.

Hold the carrot with the larger end in your dominant hand and the small end facing the grater. Hold the box grater steady with your other hand.

hand holding box grater handle with other hand grating carrot.

Take the carrot and pressing into the grater, move it downward motion against the larger holes on the box grater, then move the carrot back and do it again. You will need to readjust your hand periodically so your fingers don’t get scraped up.

You can use the smaller holes in the grater to get smaller shreds of carrot.

Once you get the the end of the carrot, you can move on to grating the next carrot.

You’ll find the shredded carrot in the bottom of the grater can fill up, getting more and more compact in there. So, if needed, take the shredded carrot and place into a small bowl and continue grating until you have the amount you need.

shredded carrots on cutting board with grater in background.

Now you can take your grated carrot and add it into you recipe that calls for grated carrot such as grated carrot salad, carrot cake or meatloaf.

If you’d like to save the carrot shreds for a later time, you can add them into ziplock bags, an airtight container or a covered bowl and store in the fridge until you need them.