How to freeze strawberries

Now that strawberry season is almost over, it is time to freeze strawberries.  I usually freeze a few flats of strawberries so I can have our berries all year long in my smoothies.  The key to properly freeze strawberries is just a little time to prep.  Follow these quick steps to make sure you too can enjoy our berries all year long.

#1 Rinse strawberries in the sink

Dump the strawberries in a colander and rinse.  Remove any dented strawberries.  Make sure to dry them with a paper towel. You want to dry the strawberries, so they don’t absorb as much water and loose their sweetness.

#2 Stem the berries

Once the strawberries are cleaned, it’s time to stem them.  You can use one of those cool stemmer tools, but I’m old fashioned here so I just use a pairing knife.

#3 Bag the berries

Now this is where you need to pay attention.  Make sure you don’t “overpack” the ziploc bag.  You want to carefully place the berries in a single layer.  That way the berries will freeze individually and you’ll be able to grab as many or as little as needed out of the bag later.

#4 Flat bags

Make sure when you are storing the bags in your freezer, that the bags are perfectly flat.  Again, this will prevent the berries from forming clusters thus allowing them to freeze individually.  Follow me? The purpose is to have them individually frozen.  There’s many ways to do this.  I’ve seen people who freeze them individually in a baking sheet inside their freezer.  But really, who has time for that? Or space?  I find that properly bagging them yields the same results as going through the baking sheet process and it cuts a lot time.  I don’t know about you, but if I can cut some minutes off here and there, I am so much happier.

How do you store your berries?  Do they even make it to the freezer?