Amanda Takes Off...

I have an emergency. Someone just dropped off 5 lbs of strawberries at my house and they are very ripe. They are not sweet at all for some reason. I need to freeze them or jam them. How did you freeze your strawberries?

You can freeze them whole on a cookie sheet (preferably with some parchment or wax paper so they don't stick to the sheet). Wash them, slice off the caps and freeze them in a single layer overnight. Then pop in a freezer bag and suck as much air out as possible.

If they're super ripe, you might want to do a syrup pack. But they aren't sweet? That's odd. If they're not sweet, I might actually try roasting them and them freezing them. I wrote about roasting strawberries on April 11th of this year. Have they been kept cold? I was reading today that strawberries taste best at room temp.

Today I did a dry sugar pack. I hulled and sliced the strawberries and then put some sugar on them. (About 1/3 C sugar to 1 quart of strawberries.) Stir gently, and let them sit in the sugar until it's dissolved and then stick the strawberries in a container, leaving a little room (about 1/2-1") for expansion.

There are other methods, too. You can pack them in a sugar syrup. Dissolve 1 C sugar in 1.25 C water. Use 1/2-1/3 C of the syrup per pint of strawberries. Place whole (hulled) or sliced strawberries in container and pour syrup over it.

I have one quart canning jars I got at the local (old-fashioned!) hardware store. You can find plastic storage/freezing caps instead of using the metal rings and lids. I LOVE these storage caps. We store sugar, rice, beans, etc in them.

There are also freezer jam recipes, but I haven't tried them yet!

Thanks. I stayed up until midnight and canned. I made strawberry jam the old fashion way without pectin. I have a small freezer, which is full right now but next time I am going to do a dry sugar pack.
I think we had too much rain this year and that may have had something to do with the stawberris not being sweet. I saw your April post about roasting them, I am going to try that next time.

Roast them with a bit of sugar (or brown sugar) to help sweetened them up.

I know Florida's weird winter made them have such a bumper crop of strawberries that they were destroying crops to save profits. People freaked out and some farmers started letting food pantries and soup kitchens come and self pick. (They'd been worried about liability, but I guess when people got pissed, those worries when out the window.)