It’s Strawberry Season!

Really sweet strawberries only last a short amount of time. But I like them year round.   To preserve strawberries I flash-freeze and foodsaver them.

1. Line jelly-roll or 9×13 pan with wax paper or Exopat/Silpat non-stick baking mat

2. wash, cut and core strawberries and place on pan in a single layer.  You don’t want them on top of each other.  I can fit about 2# of cut strawberries on a jelly roll pan.

3. lay flat in freezer for 24 hours.  This is flash freezing.  You want to completely freeze each individual strawberry piece.

4. After strawberries are completely frozen, remove them and fill a quart size FoodSaver bag.

5. Using FoodSaver, remove air and seal the bag.  It’ll look something like this.   Notice how there aren’t air pockets?

6. Store in the freezer for a LONG time.  This is the beauty of storing in FoodSaver bags.  It reduces the amount of air that comes in contact with your food and therefore reduces the likelyhood of freezer burn.   And in my book, that’s a good thing.

I store these bags in my deep freeze and pull out when I want to cook with strawberries.   Usually they go into smoothies, so frozen is just fine.  If you want to thaw them out and eat like a fresh fruit, you’re going to get a different consistency.  Not gross, but more watery and not as firm.

I froze a LOT of strawberries last year and have been using them off and on throughout the year.  I just opened a package from 12 months ago for smoothies.  They taste wonderful.  No freezer burn either.

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