Keeping Them at Their Berry Best
This time of year is fraught with difficult choices, most involving strawberries. After all, what else can you have on your mind when there are fresh, ripe berries around?
The questions start at the market. How do you pick out the ripest, freshest berries?
“What I look for mainly is, the more red color the berry has, the better,” says Jim Thompson, an extension agricultural engineer specializing in post-harvest handling of California crops at the University of California, Davis. “You know those are sweeter and they’ve been on the plant longer.
“There are some differences in color among the various cultivars, but the completeness of coloring shouldn’t change. You don’t want any white on the berry and you definitely don’t want any green. A great strawberry you can tell just from the sheen. It should be nice and bright and shiny.”
Once you get home, how do you store a berry to keep it at its best?
“The most important thing you can do for the strawberry is to cool it down and keep it cool,” says Kirk Larson, a fruit scientist specializing in strawberries at the University of California at Irvine. “The berry is at its peak of quality the moment you pick it and everything you want to do thereafter should be aimed at maintaining that quality. You won’t increase the quality, but you can delay any loss of quality.
“I’ve found the best thing to do when I get get berries home from the supermarket is put them in a container gently, then put a cover on top of that to keep the air from passing over them.
“But ideally, you don’t want to store them at all. It defeats the purpose of fresh strawberries.”
Adel Kader, a professor in UC Davis’ Department of Pomology who specializes in post-harvest handling, says the new plastic “clamshell” cases are particularly handy. “Keep them in the clamshell container, if they came in one,” says Kader. “A lot of strawberries are now being sold in clamshell, and they’re good for reducing water loss, even in frost-free refrigerators. If they came in a basket, put them in a plastic bag with a few holes in it.”
The strawberries will taste better if you bring them to room temperature before eating them. “I’ve noticed that fruit that is at or near room temperature seems to have a fuller flavor,” says Larson. “If you have strawberries in the refrigerator, bring them out and leave them at room temperature for a little while. They get shinier and their flavor and aromas improve.”
Under no conditions should you wash the berries until you’re just about to eat them. And when it’s time to wash them, wash carefully. “Only remove the caps after you wash them, not before,” says Teresa Thorne of the California Strawberry Commission. “Strawberries are extremely sensitive to water in terms of it breaking down their tissues. If you remove the caps and then wash them, that allows water to get down into the strawberries more readily.”
