Fresh produce is expensive, and it’s extremely frustrating when you bring fruit and veggies home from the grocery store, only to have them go bad a couple of days later. When buying a bag of baby carrots, you may notice that before long, they become covered in a fuzzy white coating. And while many people (including myself) take this to mean that the carrots have gone bad, this isn’t actually the case.

This white coating is commonly referred to as “carrot blush” or “white blush.” While this may look like the beginnings of mold, it’s actually just the carrot becoming dehydrated. Carrots have a high water content. When they start to lose some of their water, this white coating will appear. Your carrots are simply thirsty!

No need to throw away your carrots when they start to show carrot blush. To restore the carrots to their fresh state, simply soak in cold water for about 10 minutes. This will restore hydration to the carrot and thus remove that white coating. Even if your carrots retain the white coating after soaking, they are still perfectly safe to eat.

I used to toss our carrots to the chickens when they started to look like this, but now I’m definitely going to keep them around! As a rule of thumb for all vegetables when they start to not look their freshest, tossing them in a bit of olive oil and roasting them for a side dish or to blend up in a soup is my go-to tip for avoiding produce waste. Hopefully you found this tip helpful and can now avoid produce waste in the future!