Umami Pickled Carrots

This is the story of our most popular product and why we had to discontinue them before they literally blew up in our faces.

We used to make these really delicious— we called them Umami Carrot Pickles, and they were my favourite pickle. They were so many of our customers' favorite thing, and we used them in the restaurant. They were our bestseller in terms of our pickles. People were obsessed.

You have to understand, these weren't just regular pickles.

They were so good.

The thing that gave them that kind of umami flavor was we would add loads of our Maple Chili Crisp to the mix, but but then we started getting messages. First one or two, and then all of a sudden it was happening every week. We thought it was just a fluke. We thought, oh, maybe this person didn't store them in the fridge. But what we ultimately learned was it was a fermentation issue. The extra sugar from the Maple Crisp was providing too much sweetness, and messing with the pH levels. So, unfortunately, even thought this product was our favourite, it just didn't work at scale. So, we had to pull them from our wholesale program.

But this recipe's too good not to share. It's super easy to make at home. You can make a nice small batch that you and your family can consume in a couple of weeks, so you won't run into the same problems we did at a commercial scale. And actually since we pulled this pickle from our stores, we actually have invented a new chili crisp, our Burnt Orange, that I think will work even better, flavour wise. Orange and carrots, just makes sense.