We planted both raspberries and strawberries over the last few years and are getting so many we can’t eat them all. We give them away, but is there something better we can do with them?
Edit: thanks for all the great responses. I think we’re going to freeze them.
No such thing
Food fight!
Making jam is not trivial but it I think that makes it rewarding! My dad has made jam and marmalade for as long as I’ve known and it’s always an event. My parents have hundreds of jars (for some reason my dad calls them bottles? Only in a jam context though!) and every so often he cooks up a giant pot of jam with an old-fashioned sugar thermometer, testing the batch on a piece of baking paper, then bottling everything up. He often did it with my sister, who now also makes her own jam.
He labels all the jars, and we’ve opened jars that were… I dunno, a decade old I’m sure, and they were totally fine. So they will definitely keep for a long time!
If I had them, I’d process the strawberries by generously cutting the tops off (don’t throw them away!) then putting them on a parchment lined sheet pan to freeze, then once frozen, into freezer safe bags. With the tops, make kvass. Put them in a pitcher with a lot of sugar and some spices, fill the pitcher with boiled and cooled water. Cover loosely with a towel and stir twice a day until fizzy. I have some in my fridge right now and it’s delicious!
Jam? Jelly?
On raspberry pi host VPN
On strawberry eat
I have a pretty good canning set up, and strawberry jam is the first recipe in the book.
Dehydrate them. Dehydrated fruit makes for tasty and healthy snacks.
You can also pulverize them into powder after drying them and make your own sports drink mix!
How about jam? It’ll last longer than berries.
Jam’s a fair bit of work.
How about some sweet berry wine?
You can just freeze them for smoothies. Everyone is saying jam and that’s a good idea but it’s a whole process and has to be sanitary. It’s not super hard, obviously, and it’s worth learning how to do but the first time can be a bit daunting and you really have to follow every step. A smoothie is easy.
Another pretty easy thing is to make ice cream and freeze it. A restaurant I cooked at had fig trees that would go nuts once a year and we’d have buckets of figs. We basically made vanilla ice cream and added figs. That was delicious and ice cream obviously freezes well.
Smoothies for sure. Oat milk, banana, and a scoop of peanut butter.
Freezer Jam:
https://southernbite.com/easy-strawberry-freezer-jam/
It’s not shelf stable, but it will keep in the fridge for 3 weeks or in the freezer for a year.
Fruit wine or a melomel.
I used to make raspberry wine. Super easy. Some raspberries, sugar, and yeast. Put it in a barrel, wait a while, get shitfaced.
jam.
but if not jam you can go to any local big box store that does home appliances and almost always find a chest freezer for under 100 dollars. Throw the berries into 1 gallon bags and figure the rest out later. I promise you will find more uses for additional freezer space.
Juice, pie, jam. Pie being my favorite 😋😋
We freeze them and give away some
