How To Freeze Strawberries

I love produce season in Oregon! I love fresh fruits and vegetables. I love picking them. I love eating them. I love freezing them so I can have more of them later for our yummy smoothies. My husband recently asked me to pick strawberries and freeze them as that tends to be one of our go-to ingredients in our smoothies, so I got to work. I've never actually frozen strawberries before, other than just throwing them in a bag after they've been washed. They generally all clump together when you try to pull them out later and it can be quite frustrating, so I tried a new method this time: a method I, of course, got off of Pinterest. To see how to do this yourself, check out this blog. P.S., this is from some place in Oregon, which I found even cooler!

Mmmm...yummy strawberries

So, I made up my solution of vinegar and water. Seriously, I don't know if there truly is anything vinegar CAN'T do. It's awesome. Then I hulled the strawberries, rinsed them off and let them sit in the water/vinegar solution for about 20 minutes. It looks like in the blog they hulled the strawberries after they let them sit in the solution, but I thought this might be a bit easier and I doubt that it impacted the berries that much. My opinion: do whatever is easiest and most appealing to you. 

The berries taking a bath

As I said, I let the berries sit in there for a while and mixed them up every few minutes, then I pulled them out and placed them on a baking sheet. Another blog I read suggested laying wax paper down first, so I did that as well. I wouldn't recommend this. The berries actually came off of the pan better when they weren't sitting on the wax paper. The wax paper made it harder to pull the berries off the pan without having wax paper attached to them. 

Ready to be frozen

I, thankfully, had just cleaned out my freezer so I had extra room for my strawberries, so in they went. 

Frozen strawberries ready to be bagged

After the strawberries had frozen (I left them in there for at least 3-4 hours), I put them in ziplock baggies, labeled the bags and stuck them in the freezer for later use. 

I did leave about a pint of strawberries out of the freezer for eating with the angel food cake my son and I had made, and they were soft, but very tasty. I'd recommend using the vinegar/water solution whenever you bring home fresh berries - it makes them last longer! To read more about that, check out this blog. And if you are worried about them having a vinegar-y taste - no need to worry - you won't notice it at all, but you will notice that your berries are mold free for longer!

I also picked raspberries to make raspberry jam and washed them in the same solution. This is definitely something I will be doing anytime I get berries now...it seems worth it to preserve the berries we have and make sure they are nice and clean. And now, I must go eat some berries. Ta Ta For Now.