Have you ever paid $5 for a pint of raspberries only to toss them out because they were all fuzzy and moldy? Has that ever happened to you before you even got home? Let me share a berry saving tip with you that I learned today.

http://thejuicywoman.blogs.com/my_weblog/2012/03/keeping-your-berries-so-berry-nice.html

Don’t you just love berries? Ooh me too. Strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries, cranberries, boysenberries, and who could forget raspberries? Berries are fabulously delicious. You can enjoy them in shakes, smoothies, add them to cereal, oatmeal or bake them up into a pie or just grab a handful and have them as a quick snack. But the problem with berries is that they’re amazingly delicate especially raspberries. That’s why you have to use them quickly or find a way to preserve them.

Andrea’s Juicy Berry Memory

Gosh! I love berries. They hold such happy memories for me. I remember years ago when I was in my mid-twenties, I used to help my Nana prepare homemade jams for the church bazaar. At different times during the year, we’d go out and pick buckets of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. Once we got back to her kitchen we would carefully wash and sort all the berries and begin the process of making them into jam. It took hours but the time spent alone with my Nana was magical. But everything had to be done so quickly because berries have an extremely short shelf life.

Have you ever paid $5 for a pint of raspberries only to toss them out because they were all fuzzy and moldy? Has that ever happened to you before you even got home?

There’s nothing more heartbreaking than to open your fridge at breakfast time, expecting to whip up some fabulous blueberry pancakes or homemade muffins and you go to reach for your berries and they have a nasty white mold on their insides.

Ok let me tell you how to avoid that problem so that you can keep your berries berry fresh.

A Berry Nice Berry Tip: Wash your berries with vinegar. 

If you want to preserve your berries and extend their freshness, you will want to wash them in a vinegar and water solution. White or apple cider vinegar is best.

The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit. As a result of washing them in the berry saving solution, your raspberries can last up to a week in the fridge and your strawberries can go almost 2 weeks without getting moldy and soft.

Here’s the instructions for the Berry Saving Solution:

In a bowl, mix up a solution of vinegar and water that is one part vinegar to 10 parts water. So as an example –that would be ½ cup vinegar to 5 cups of water. Now add the berries to the solution and swirl them around gently with your hand to clean them, releasing any dirt or impurities.

Then follow by draining the berries and in the case of strawberries, remove the hull which is the green cap or stem. You don’t have to rinse any of your berries because the vinegar solution is so diluted you won’t be able to taste the vinegar. But if you prefer, then rinse your berries. Now pop them in the fridge.

Freezing Your Berries

If you’d like to try extending their freshness even more, put them in a green bag, releasing the excess air and close the bag and seal it by just gathering the top of the bag and twisting it gently and placing the berries in the fridge.

Also you can freeze any of your berries and also depitted cherries for up to several months. And you can bet your fruit will taste so much better than the frozen packs that you’d get at the store.

So go ahead and stock up on those yummy bits of juicy goodness and know that they will be fresh for as long as it takes for you to eat them.

Andrea Amador, The Juicy Woman, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, preserve berries, eat, food, diet