How To Make Garden Strawberries Sweeter

How to sweeten under ripe or sour strawberries - Macerated strawberries - craftycookingmama.com

Yay!!! It's strawberry season! Strawberry season is the local kick off to a summer of great produce. Not much beats ripe, freshly picked strawberries. Everyone gets excited and a bit crazy during the first few days of the season. Demand is high and the berries are moving. In order to keep up with the craze, you'll find that sometimes the berries are picked in haste. If you're not picking your own, you might find a bit too many under ripe strawberries. Not so sweet and delicious.

You know what else is not so sweet & delicious – the majority of strawberries I buy throughout the year at my local grocery stores. They look like big, bright, juicy berries – but when you taste them, well you don't taste much 🙁

The first thing I do when I bring berries home is remove them from their cartons, rinse them off and let them air dry. This way they're ready to eat. This is also the time you should inspect for any bad berries that need to be tossed or badly bruised & overly ripe berries that need to be eaten right away.

So what to do with those greenish-whitish sour strawberries. Easy. Chop up all your cleaned berries, throw them in a bowl and mix them up with some sugar. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours. The sugar and natural acidic juices from the strawberries mix and macerate/marinate the berries in sweetness. No need to make a simple syrup – the berry juices do it for you. This works best with a mixture of juicy ripe and not so ripe berries.

That's it. At times I feel silly stating what seems obvious to many. After having a conversation with an older woman at the grocery store today, I realized there are a lot of people who don't know such little tricks.

On another note, if the strawberry crop is abundant, buy up on it while it's cheap. Strawberries freeze very well – even more so if you have a vacuum sealer.

Okay, enough reading! Go out and get your fresh strawberries – the season doesn't last too long!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have a beautiful day : )

-Amanda-

How to sweeten under ripe or sour strawberries - Macerated strawberries - craftycookingmama.com

How to Sweeten Up Under Ripe or Sour Strawberries

Under ripe Strawberries? Don't throw them out! Use this simple trick to sweeten up those sour, white/green strawberries!

Prep Time 10 mins

Total Time 10 mins

1 pound strawberries
1 tablespoon sugar

Wash, clean, hull and cut (half or quarter) strawberries.
In a medium bowl, combine berries with sugar. Mix until sugar is completely dissolved.
Store covered in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.
Enjoy your sweet, juicy strawberries!