carved carrot flowers

after posting my “before and after” bento last night, i received several comments about the carved carrot flowers it featured.  i thought it might be helpful to post a quick tutorial on how to make those.

what you’ll need

• about 1/3 of a fat carrot (or more, if you want more than a few flowers!)
• a small, sharp paring knife and a cutting board
• a flower shaped cutter (there are both plastic and metal ones available; i like the round-petal one from this set)

what to do

1. on your cutting board, carefully cut your carrot into thick (about 1/2″) rounds.

2. steam the rounds for about 3 minutes on each side (because these are thick they take a while to get soft); i salt mine before steaming but you don’t have to do so.

3. when they are done steaming, shock them in extremely cold water, to stop the cooking process and keep them brightly colored.  i find that the easiest way to do this is to set them in a small bowl in the sink, and then turn the tap on as cold as it will go, letting the water run over them for a few moments.

4. bring the cooled rounds back to your cutting board, and using the flower-shaped cutter, cut a flower from the center of each round.  (save the scraps for omurice, fried rice, tamagoyaki, or any other cooked dish!)

here’s what you should have done so far:

now let’s keep going:

5.  with your paring knife, cut a curved line around the right side of one of the petals.  you want to cut straight down, and pretty deep, but no more than half-way through the carrot round.  you essentially want to outline the right side of the petal with an incision.  here is a photo showing a drawn line (drawn on the photo, not on the carrot!) where the incision should be made:

6.  in your mind, mark a vertical line dividing the next petal (to the right of your incision) into two halves.  slide the blade of the paring knife, on an angle, starting at that imaginary line, and cutting towards the incision you already made (e.g. from right to left).  the blade should start shallow at the imaginary line, and cut deeper towards the real incision, so that you end up cutting a diagonal wedge out of the petal.  here’s another photo-drawing showing the line where you need to cut, and the actual cut taking place:

7.  on the petal from which you just cut a diagonal wedge, repeat step 5, “outlining” the right side of the petal with a deep incision.

8. on the next petal to the right, repeat step 6, cutting a diagonal wedge that gets deeper moving towards the last incision you made.

9.  repeat until you’ve carved all the petals.  that’s it!

here’s what the final flowers look like:

i hope you find these instructions clear, but if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments!

[as seen on be my bento]