This Genius Hack Will Make Your Old Carrots New Again

Have you ever gone on an ambitious grocery store run only to leave your fresh produce, neglected, to wilt away in the fridge drawers? Of course you have. We can't totally salvage your big plans to eat more veggies, but this one easy trick can bring your carrots back from the dead just in time for Halloween.

Cool air in your fridge tends to dry out fruits and veggies eventually, even if you are using your fridge drawers correctly for optimal humidity. Cooling air forces water out, so cold air is usually also drier air, which dries out the outer layers of food (via NASA and Whirlpool). It's the same principle behind that awful dry feeling you have waking up on cold winter mornings. Those wilted leaves and shriveled fruits aren't necessarily "bad" — they're probably just dehydrated. But some veg can soak water back up again, and return to their former crunchy glory.

TikTok user Lottie Dalziel (@lottiedalziel) recently posted a clip where she takes a bendy, "bad" old carrot, places it in water for five minutes, and the carrot is revived, as if by magic, to its formerly crisp and firm state. The carrot, it turns out, absorbs some of the water by osmosis, a process by which water transfers over membranes toward whichever environment is saltier – in this case, the carrot, as demonstrated by a NASA activity.

Though the trick isn't new, Dalziel's post got almost 43,000 likes and comments like, "wow you changed my life" and "Do you think that will work for my grandma's face." Turns out, this is a great way to keep carrots fresh for weeks — or you could even wrap them in damp paper towels, as DIY Network recommends. The paper towel method might be the way to go after all, because — and this is from personal experience — if you keep a few carrots in a jar of water for too long, they'll grow too big to remove. So limit it to a few carrots — after all, no one wants a snack that's inedible because it's now stuck.