How to freeze strawberries?

Many of us love juicy, sweet strawberries. Unfortunately, their season lasts very short, less than a month.Therefore, housewives are trying to prepare berries for future use. To preserve all the taste and benefits, you need to know some rules and tricks that will help you pamper your loved ones with fragrant strawberries all winter.

Properly frozen strawberries (or, more correctly, garden strawberries) contain all the same substances as the fresh crop. The only condition: after defrosting, it should be eaten immediately so that it does not lose vitamins and trace elements in its composition. Experts note that frozen berries have significantly fewer calories, which means that they are excellent for dietary nutrition.

Strawberries are rich in vitamin C, phosphorus and calcium, iodine, pectin, iron and folic acid. A valuable complex of minerals makes this product simply magical in its effects and benefits. It is useful to eat strawberries for anemia, atherosclerosis, diseases of the thyroid gland, during epidemics of influenza and ARVI.

Antioxidants in its composition prolong the youth of the body. These berries in moderation can be eaten by pregnant women to prevent edema. It will help get rid of carcinogens in the body to smokers due to the large amount of organic acids. Scarlet berries also help those who follow weight and want to lose weight. They normalize the metabolism and have a positive effect on intestinal peristalsis.

Strawberries can hardly harm the body with moderate consumption. But for hypertension, gout, and people with food allergies, it should be eaten with caution. And at all should be abandoned berries sick ulcer or gastritis, especially at the stage of aggravation. Small grains that irritate the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract can become dangerous for them.

But not every housewife knows for sure whether it is necessary to wash the berries before harvesting for the winter or not. Here there is a rule: if strawberries are purchased, then it is necessary to wash them. Do this by dropping the berries in a colander into a saucepan with warm water. The smaller the layer, the better the strawberries will be washed. Keep it long in the water is not worth it. Immediately spread on a dry towel and after half an hour of drying, proceed to freeze.

After that, tails are gently removed with fingers or a ceramic knife. Using a metal tool can lead to a reaction with the berry, which will lead to oxidation and loss of some nutrients.

Berries from your site can not be washed, but only to process a cool stream from an ordinary home hair dryer. It is better to pick berries in dry weather after five in the evening. They are frozen in small portions, as they, being plucked, quickly deteriorate. Ideally, recycling should take place one to two hours after collection.

It is better to choose medium-sized and rather dry berries for subsequent freezing, leaving large and juicy for use in live form or making jam. They should be with a glossy surface, no dents and spots.

There are various ways to preserve the berries in the refrigerator or freezer. The choice of one or another conservation option without cooking depends on the required shelf life, further uses, and the volume of the container for freezing. In the freezer at home, strawberries are usually frozen in their pure form. Blanks are also made with the addition of sugar or powdered sugar. You can save the berries in the form of crushed blender.In this case, it turns out delicious mashed potatoes with or without added sugar.

To properly freeze strawberries for the winter, it is better to keep it in a special freezer at a temperature of about -16 degrees. Should decide the choice of packaging. Optimally, if it will be single-serving containers. That is, the berries after defrosting should be used and not subjected to re-freezing. For this purpose, suitable small plastic disposable cups or even jars of yogurt, sour cream and other products.

When the freezer area is not enough, use ordinary bags and plastic containers. To do this, on the bottom of any suitable shape of the container line the bag and put strawberries there. It is kept in the freezer for 1-2 hours. When the berries are frozen, the bag is simply removed from the mold, and the container itself is closed as tightly as possible, squeezing out all the remaining air. In the same way, it is received in order to prepare for the future grated berry with a lack of space.

Well known storage methods using sugar or powdered sugar. For this, pre-processed and peeled strawberries are kept in the refrigerator for several hours. Then sprinkle, already frostbite, sand and again sent to the freezer. Per kilogram of berries take a glass of sand. When harvesting with icing sugar, you can not pour layers of strawberries with it, but just dip the tips of the green leaves into the powder so that they will not be weathered and not oxidized by air.

Often housewives use briquettes to freeze berries, as with this method, the harvesting takes up the least amount of space in the refrigerator. And sugar as a preservative prolongs the shelf life of strawberries.

Per kilogram of berries take from half a glass to a glass of sand - depending on taste preferences. The berries are washed through a plastic colander in warm water and laid out to dry for 20-30 minutes on a clean cotton towel. After drying the strawberries, each berry is cut into four parts and placed in a glass, plastic or enameled container, pouring each layer of sugar. As such, it is left for a day to give the juice juice. Then the juice is poured and frozen separately (or immediately used for food). Berries with sand grind grind manually or with a blender. Prepare a dry clean container and cling film or clean bags. The film or package is carefully wrapped in a container, covering the bottom and walls, leaving fairly long releases.

The resulting mass from the blender is poured into a container, closed and sent to the refrigerator for a day. After freezing the strawberry puree, the briquette is removed from the container, tightly tied or wrapped, and again placed in the freezer for storage.

Delicious and healthy dessert can be prepared by making your own homemade banana and condensed milk ice cream. All you need is a blender and three ingredients: strawberries, bananas and condensed milk. There is such a delicacy not only tasty, but also useful.

If the berries have not been pre-frozen, and you use fresh strawberries, then it should be washed, dried and peeled. Then, together with peeled banana and cut into thick circles, place for two hours in the freezer. Two bananas take about 20 medium-sized berries. Then take out the ingredients and, without defrosting, pour it into the blender bowl. Add to the same 2 tablespoons of condensed milk and grind everything to the consistency of mashed potatoes.The resulting billet is laid out in portions or vases and freeze.

Always defrost such a portion, which will be eaten on the same day. Do not repeatedly chill the strawberries. It will lose not only commercial quality, but also most of its useful substances.

On the night before the supposed day of defrosting, the berries are taken out of the freezer into the refrigerator compartment for storing fresh fruits. Then they are taken out in the morning, and the strawberry thaws already at room temperature.

When freezing strawberries it is not bad to know some details of the process. They will help to preserve the crop better and avoid unpleasant misunderstandings.

• It is better if the volume of the freezer is large, and the berries are frozen not by a single briquette, but by individual single portions.
• Strawberries are not stored on the same shelf or in the same chamber with fish and meat.
• To freeze, you must choose a dark red variety, it is usually a hybrid mixture with strawberries. Early, very juicy berries are best used for other purposes.
• Berry picking is carried out in dry weather early in the morning before the dew falls or before the sunset in the evening.
• The sieve for washing berries must be plastic. With a container made of metal, the surface of the berries enters an acid reaction, and the strawberries darken.
• Freeze whole berries well with a small number of layers - no more than two when there is space in the freezer.
• After washing, the berries are not dried until they are completely dry. Leave the water to drain on the towel for a maximum of an hour.
• When choosing a storage method, the end use of the berries plays a key role. Therefore, you first need to decide in which form the strawberries will be eaten.
• Keep in mind the shelf life of strawberries, so as not to receive harm to health. If all the norms of storage are kept in a freezer at a temperature of –16 to –18 degrees, the berries are stored for about six months.

Use these little tricks and freeze the berries according to the rules. So you can easily extend the strawberry season and please your loved ones with useful, sweet berries, which will become a real exotic in the midst of winter.

To learn how to freeze strawberries, see below.