Preserving Fresh Berries for One Person
A very easy way to freeze and preserve berries when cooking for one personBerries are ephemeral little jewels that mark the progress of summer: strawberries at the start, blueberries in mid-summer, and cranberries at the emergence of fall. How can a single person keep them long enough to enjoy them throughout the year?
Freezing is an excellent way of preserving berries when you are cooking for one person. It requires no unusual equipment and is almost no work to get tasty results later.
There is a disagreement whether to gently wash your berries before you freeze or not. I am in favor of very gently and quickly rinsing them under cool, trickling water. I prefer to delicately rinse them and spread them out on a clean, cotton dish towel to dry. This will get rid of any surface dirt and debris, and rinsing them once frozen doesn't loosen the dirt as well. The key note is to give them a light sprinkle, not a submerged bath. You do not want your berries to absorb excess water, especially raspberries.
Equipment needed:
- colander or sieve
- clean, cotton dish towel
- baking sheet
- plastic zipper-style freezer bags labelled and dated (do not use regular storage bags or sandwich bags - they will not provide the necessary insulation)
- freezer
Ingredients needed:
- fresh, gently rinsed berries (as much as you wish to freeze)
- granulated white sugar (optional) (a teaspoon or two per quart of berries)
How you do it:
- Rinse the berries gently and quickly under just a trickle of water.
- Spread them out on a clean, cotton dish towel to dry.
- Once dry, place them on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with just a little sugar, if using. Holding the edges of the baking sheet and wiggle the sheet back and forth enough to gingerly roll berries around the sheet until the sugar coats them.*
- Make sure as much as possible that the berries aren't touching each other. They will freeze together into one large, undesirable clump. You want them to freeze individually.
- Place the sheet on a level surface in your freezer.
- Once the berries are completely frozen, take them out, place them in labelled/dated freezer bags, and return the filled bags to the freezer. You can now use as few or as many berries as you wish later.
*Although not essential, using a little granulated sugar on the berries helps some with retaining the berries shape and flavor once they are removed and thawed.