There are many ways to freeze fruit to make them last longer, including strawberries. This Spring and Summer fruit can be frozen with several methods.
Though, one great and multi-purpose to freeze strawberries is by freezing a strawberry syrup. Not only will you have the frozen strawberries, but also the syrup to use in a variety of recipes.
There are a few components to freezing strawberries in syrup. There’s the preparation of the strawberries, the making of the syrup, and putting them all together to put in the freezer.
Prepping the Strawberries
The first thing you will want to do before using strawberries in anything is to wash them. Some are content with running them under warm water and some want a bit more.
A great way to make sure your strawberries are completely clean goes as follows.
- Give the strawberries a quick first rinse of water.
- Fill a container with water and pour in plenty of baking soda (1 teaspoon for every 2 cups of water.)
- Mix the baking soda into the water.
- Put the strawberries into the mixture and let them sit for 15 minutes.
- Rinse the strawberries off for a final time.
This method is sure to get any weird stuff off your produce.
After cleaning the strawberries, you’ll then want to remove the greens. You can rip them off, cut the tops off, or stick a straw in the center of the strawberry to pop them off. The method is up to you.
The straw method works particularly well for this as it wastes less strawberry and allows the syrup to get into the center of the strawberry.
Making the Syrup
Making syrups out of fruit is a lot easier than many may think. It only takes 5 or 6 ingredients and not a ton of time.
Here’s how to make strawberry syrup:
- To a saucepan, add 2 cups of strawberries and 2 tablespoons of water. Set the heat on low.
- Add a splash of lemon juice and cover the strawberries with sugar.
- Allow the strawberries to start releasing juices. Stir continuously. As the sugar starts to dissolve, keep adding more sugar. You will end up adding around ⅙ cup of sugar in total.
- Keep stirring and if you want a smoother syrup, use a masher to mash the strawberries.
- If you want a thicker syrup, add a tablespoon of cornstarch to the hot mixture. At this point, you may want to add a preservative to the mix as well. Citric acid works great here, add about a teaspoon.
- Once the juices have all been released, remove them from heat. You can either move the entire mixture to a different container right away or put the mixture through a strainer first. This depends on whether you want to keep the pulps of the strawberries or not.
Make sure to clean the saucepan right away so you don’t end up with a sticky mess.
Time to Freeze
Here comes the easiest part, putting it all together for the freezer. With the rest of the prepared strawberries that you have, add them to the container with the syrup. Give the whole thing a stir so the strawberries don’t stay at the top.
Now, you can close the container, label it with the date, and put it in the freezer. The strawberries in the syrup will last around 6 months in the freezer. Perfect to keep throughout the warm months.
Defrosting
The best way to thaw out your strawberries for future use is by putting the whole thing into the fridge overnight. This will slowly thaw out the fruit without changing the taste or texture.
Enjoy!
This method of freezing strawberries is perfect for all of the sweet tooths out there. You will have access to a sweet mixture for months, and this wasn’t too hard to make at all.
If you are really pinched for time or can’t do all the work, you can purchase the syrup at the store. This won’t be nearly the same as making it from scratch, but if you just want to preserve the strawberries, then this method will work well for you.
Enjoy your sweet treat!
