Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Strawberries: So Fresh and So Clean Clean


Dear Tricia, What's the best way to keep strawberries fresher, longer?

Well, for starters, DON'T buy those as-seen-on-TV bags that are meant to keep your produce fresh for up to a month. Who wants to eat a month-old carrot?? I sure don't. And if you do, then please don't add me as your friend on Facebook.
With strawberries, I know that they get soft and mold easily. And as soon as one starts to go bad, they all follow suit and cover themselves in a cozy blanket of green fuzz. The first thing you need to do is get them out of the package. Lay them out on a plate or cookie sheet and give them plenty of room between each other. Like me, they need lots of personal space. And keep them refrigerated. If you're going to eat them right away, don't worry about refrigerating them.
This is the way we had to keep all of our berries when I was cooking in San Francisco and our produce was organic, thus, more likely to go bad faster. (That's one good thing about chemicals.) Laying them out with room to breathe is the best way to keep them fresh, and it works great with other berries, especially raspberries which go bad in like 2 seconds.

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