Content

• Method 2 of 2: Freezing strawberries
• Tips
• Warnings

1 Examine strawberries carefully before purchasing for signs of stale berries. Spots or crushed berries in the container indicate that the berries may have begun to rot. In any case, wet berries will spoil much faster. Darkened or soft berries are likely to have begun to deteriorate, and berries that have started to grow mold are not suitable for food.

• If you are picking berries in your garden, wait until the berries are ripe and bright red, but still firm enough.

2 Throw away any berries that have started to grow immediately. Mold can spread from one berry to another and quickly spoil the entire package of strawberries purchased. Of course, you want to buy a package full of fresh, red strawberries with no signs of mold, but unfortunately, among the good berries there are always one or two stale ones. Go through the berries immediately after purchase and discard any bruised, soft, or browned berries that can go bad quickly.

• This also applies to other moldy fruits that are stored next to strawberries.

3 Wash strawberries just before eating. If you wash the strawberries in advance, they begin to absorb water, the berries become limp and quickly deteriorate. To avoid this, wash the berry just before you start eating it or using it for cooking.

• If your strawberries have been washed, pat dry with a paper tea towel.
• Before eating strawberries, it is imperative to wash them so that harmful chemicals and organisms that could get on the berries from the soil are removed from their surface.

4 We recommend rinsing the berries in a vinegar solution. A mixture of table vinegar and water can better remove harmful bacteria and viruses from the surface of berries than ordinary water, but this does not increase the shelf life of strawberries. Berries spoil even if we kill all the harmful bacteria that destroy the strawberries, and a large amount of liquid only accelerates the spoilage of the berries. If you bought a package of strawberries in which there are many berries affected by mold, sort out and discard the spoiled ones, and spray the rest with a solution consisting of 1 part vinegar and 3 parts water. In other cases, rinse the berry with water and vinegar just before eating.

• Gently rinse each berry with your hands, this will help to better remove dirt and pathogens. It is not enough just to rinse the berries under running water.

5 Store strawberries in the refrigerator or other cool place. The berries will stay fresh if you store them in a cool place, the optimal storage temperature for strawberries is 0–2ºC. To prevent the strawberries from drying out, store them in the lower drawer of the refrigerator, in a plastic container, or in a loosely closed plastic bag.

• If the berries are too wet, dry them with paper tea towels first, then use clean paper towels to spread over the strawberry layers to remove excess liquid.

Method 2 of 2: Freezing strawberries

1. 1 Freeze ripe, firm berries. If the strawberries are already soft and start to deteriorate, freezing them will not save them. Ripe, bright red berries are best used. Sort through the strawberries, discarding any soft or moldy berries.
2. 2 Remove the inedible green sepals. Strawberries are usually sold with sepals. They must be removed before freezing.
3. 3 Think in what form you want to freeze the berry. You can freeze the whole berries, but if you are going to use these strawberries in the future for cooking different dishes, you may find it more convenient to cut the berries into pieces of the desired size or mash them in advance. Freezing and defrosting the berries will make them harder to cut, although you can easily make mashed berries from the melted berries. Large berries, cut into pieces, can be frozen and thawed more evenly.
   • If you do not know in what form to freeze the berry, think about which dishes you plan to use it in. Strawberry puree is great for smoothies and smoothies, sliced ​​great for decorating cakes and waffles, and whole strawberries can be used in chocolate fondue.
4. 4 Add sugar or sugar syrup (optional). If you add sugar or sugar syrup to the berry, it will help to better preserve its taste, aroma and shape, but not everyone likes that the berries become too sweet from this. If you decide to go this route, take 100 grams of sugar for each liter of berries, whole, chopped or pureed. Another way is to make a rich sugar syrup by mixing sugar and warm water in a 1: 1 ratio, then cool it in the refrigerator and pour over the berries so that they are completely covered with the syrup.
   • It is better to add sugar or sugar syrup to the berry when it is already distributed in containers. However, deciding whether to add sugar is best done in advance to leave room for the sugar or syrup in the container.
5. 5 Consider using pectin syrup instead of sugar (optional). This is a good option if you love unsweetened strawberries, but want to retain their flavor and shape better than normal dry freezing without adding any ingredients. You will need to buy a package of pectin powder and brew it with boiling water. The amount of water required per package varies and depends on the specific product brand. Leave the syrup to cool completely before pouring it over the berry.
   • Note that pectin syrup cannot preserve berries as well as sugar or sugar syrup.
6. 6 Place the strawberries in a container that is suitable for freezing food. Plastic and thick glass containers work well, but make sure they are freezer-safe first. Another way is to freeze the berries in a plastic freezer bag with a locking clip. Do not stack the strawberries too tightly, otherwise the berries will freeze into a single mass. We advise you to leave the container 1.5-2 centimeters empty on top, because the berry expands when frozen.
   • If you are freezing berries "dry", without adding sugar or syrup, it is best to sprinkle the berries loosely in one layer on a baking sheet or freezer tray and freeze that way for several hours. After that, the frozen berries can be arranged in containers or bags. In this way, you will get individual berries. which can be taken out one by one, and not frozen, a single conglomerate.
7. 7 Before eating, the berries must be partially thawed. Remove the strawberries from the freezer and let them thaw in the refrigerator for a few hours. If you want to speed up this process, you can place the strawberries under cold running water. Do not defrost the berry in the microwave or use other defrosting methods, this can turn the berry into an unappetizing, shapeless mass. You can eat the berry when there are still ice crystals on its surface; fully melted strawberries often become soft and sour.
   • In each case, the defrosting time depends on the size of the berries and the freezing temperature. Large amounts of berries frozen together may need to be left overnight or longer.

Tips

• If the berries are soft, but not moldy or sour, you can add them to baked goods or mashed them and use them as a salad dressing.

Warnings

• Prolonged contact with zinc or other metals can accelerate berry spoilage. This mainly concerns the industrial processing of large volumes of berries, and not home use.