Freezing Strawberries

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Mary Microwave

Assistant Cook
Joined
Apr 7, 2008
Messages
47
Location
New England
We are begining to get some wonderful strawberries from our garden now. I don't know about elsewhere, but the varieties that grow in New England produce a lot of fruit all at once. (We have some "everbearing" plants but thy seem to be more of a novelty than real producers.)

I've found a few websites that give a wide variety of freezing methods.

LINK REMOVED

But I really wanted to hear from some folks with actual at home experience with this. Our most common use for strawberries is cut up for strawberry shortcake, pie and topping for pancakes.
 
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clean (wash, remove green part, cut up if desired), dry very thoroughly, freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet (make sure they aren't touching), then move them to a bag once frozen solid
 
I freeze whole ones, as noted above, until I can deal with them and then I make jams and preserves. I just finished making Strawberry Jam, Banana-Strawberry jam, Strawberry-Blueberry jam and Strawberry Preserves.......Preserves being bigger chunks of the fruit..... some low-sugar and some regular.
 
Yes for the jams & preserves, some batches using a full-sugar pectin and others using a low-sugar pectin. The frozen ones just go into the freezer whole with nothing else added.
 
clean (wash, remove green part, cut up if desired), dry very thoroughly, freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet (make sure they aren't touching), then move them to a bag once frozen solid


Yep, this is how I do it. Once thoroughly frozen, I vacuum-seal them in FoodSaver bags. Can't do it until they're frozen. Otherwise they'll get squooshed.
 
Carefully wash and dry on kitchen paper. Open freeze - this is to say, place on plastic trays with space between each berry. Place the trays in the freezer uncovered/unwrapped. When the berries are frozen, repack in amount/weights that you will use and that make sense to you and how you will use the fruit.

Purée, sweeten with icing sugar and freeze in batches of a size which you will use.

If freezing for jam, remember that the pectin content and pectin integrity may be adversely affected by freezing so allow an extra 10% by weight in any recipe. Thus if a recipe says to use 5 lbs for a batch of jam using FRESH strawberries use 5 1/2 lb if the fruit has been frozen. Alternatively, use some apple juice/redcurrant juice (qwhich contains pectin) in the recipe and remember that a jam requires an acid component, which is often added lemon juice, irrespective of the natural acid content of the fruit.

Hope this helps,
Archiduc
 
refridgerate them until cold then drop them in a cooler filled w/ dry ice until the are rock hard. Bag them and put into the freezer....Thanks AB
 
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