- Today we're gonna test out
the best way to store strawberries.
So this video's inspired by my original video
that I did way back in 2012
on how to store strawberries using a vinegar bath
and the best way for keeping them fresh for a long time.
However, I wanted to put that method to the test.
Similarly, I recently tested avocados the same way
and tested out 12 different ways to store a cut avocado
to surprisingly find the best way was boiling it.
So this whole video
is about that same sort of experiment.
So we're gonna walk through this in two different ways.
We're gonna test out how to wash the strawberries,
the best way to wash them
and prevent them from molding once they're in the fridge,
and then secondly, we're gonna test how to store them,
a couple different methods,
from a Mason jar to a paper-lined dish
to see what works best for storing the strawberries.
The thing about this video is I really wanted
to just put every method that I could find
on the internet to the test,
and we're gonna do that now.
So the reason that we're testing out
a few different ways that you can actually wash strawberries
is because there's so many different opinions out there
of what's the best way to keep those berries fresh.
So everything from using vinegar to baking soda
to just using plain old hot water,
we're gonna try all different methods, six in total.
The first method is the easiest.
It's just the control method,
we're not gonna do anything at all.
We're just gonna see if that berry,
how long it lasts without doing anything to it
after we bring it home from the store.
The second method is actually using hot water.
We're gonna bring hot water up to about 140 degrees
and then we're gonna pour that over the berries.
The thought behind this is that that hot water
will kill any bacteria or microbes or anything like that,
so that way that the berries will not actually mold.
So just like the control method,
the next thing we're gonna do is rinse the berries.
This is straight-up just taking the berries
and rinsing them with tap water.
It's not hot, it's not treated,
it's just straight-up tap water.
Next method up is we're gonna try using a vinegar bath.
With the vinegar bath
you take three parts water, one part vinegar,
soak the berries in that solution for about 15 minutes.
Now, the thing is, people often ask
is it gonna taste like vinegar?
No.
Berries are like, mostly water,
and so you'd have to soak those berries
in that solution for hours and hours and hours
before it's going to absorb that vinegar taste.
The 15 minutes that's in there
is just about killing the bacteria
and any sort of mold spores that are on the berries.
Next we're gonna try baking soda.
Similar to the vinegar method,
we're just gonna take some water,
we're gonna add baking soda to it,
and we're gonna soak the berries for about 15 minutes.
Baking soda's actually been proven
to remove pesticides from produce even more so than bleach,
so I'm kind of curious to see how this method turns out.
And then lastly we're gonna try the method
that I did back in 2012,
and that was the combination of baking soda and vinegar,
soaking the berries in that solution,
and then fully drying them and storing them.
(baking soda fizzing)
Okay, so we're gonna try all of those methods,
and do you want to guess who the winner is?
(bright music)
Okay, so I tested out my six different ways
for washing strawberries.
As I mentioned, this is how you prepare the strawberries
for just plopping them in the refrigerator
and seeing which method
is gonna actually keep them the freshest the longest.
Now, for these six different methods,
for the most part the berries kind of stayed the same
for about two weeks.
They all kind of looked pretty good.
I was actually quite surprised,
and I wanna make a note about that.
So when you're buying this produce,
especially if you're buying it from the grocery store,
you don't know how long it's been on the truck,
at the store, there's no real way to tell.
But if you're buying from a farmer's market,
those ingredients are probably gonna be
a lot fresher than from the grocery store.
So when you bring those berries home,
there's probably gonna be some sort of delta
between when they were picked and when you actually get them
that might affect these actual times
if you did the experiment yourself.
But for the most part,
they looked pretty darn good at 14 days.
It was really at 21 days where I really started to see
certain berries take a twist.
Now, let me talk about those results.
So day 21,
the control group actually still looked pretty good.
These were the berries that I didn't do anything to.
I just took them out of the container
and I put them in the other container.
I did nothing to them.
However, the rinsed berries,
I was actually surprised at how poorly they were looking.
I think the reason for that is the rinsed berries,
I probably just maybe didn't get them dry enough.
The water was still on them,
and as I mentioned, water is the enemy.
So if they're still wet and they're in the refrigerator,
they're just gonna start to spoil faster.
The one that really surprised me was the hot water bath.
So the hot water bath at this point,
they started to look like cooked berries.
Now, up until this point,
they were actually looking pretty decent.
I actually thought the hot water bath might be the winner.
I was wrong.
The hot water bath looked like cooked berries.
The vinegar one was doing pretty well still.
It looked really, really good,
the same as it did the full 14 to 21 days.
It was nice, plump, juicy,
I still wanted to eat those berries.
The baking soda and the mix of the baking soda and vinegar
coming in second here.
They were looking okay,
there was definitely some signs of decay.
By day 22, you really started to see even more changes.
Those vinegar berries were still looking pretty darn good,
but those hot water bath berries,
man, they were not ready for this.
They were downhill.
So I do not recommend the hot water bath method.
I've seen that around the internet,
I've seen it, hey, this is the way to do it, it's easy.
It's not, it just cooks the berries.
It's good for maybe a good week,
then they start to turn.
By day 23, most of the methods were showing signs of decay.
We were seeing a lot of the berries,
they weren't quite moldy,
but we were seeing a lot of the berries take a turn.
However, the vinegar one was still going.
By the last day, the day I ended the experiment,
at this point most everything had given up
except for the berries washed in vinegar,
which is why that method was the best.
Washing your berries in three parts water, one part vinegar,
soaking them for 15 minutes, taking them out,
making sure that you get them thoroughly dry,
and then store them in the fridge,
and it looks like those berries,
I believe the vinegar berries from this experiment
could have lasted at least a month.
They're the clear winner.
Okay, so we tested out how to wash the berries
and we have our winner from that.
Now we're gonna test out how to store the berries.
So strawberries in general, they like being cold.
They like being cold
and they are not sensitive to ethylene gas,
so you don't have to worry about storing them
next to avocados or apples
or tomatoes or anything like that.
But actually outside of being kind of soft and tender,
they're quite durable when it comes to that part.
So now we're gonna test out
how to actually store these berries.
We're gonna store them
in everything from the original container that they came in
to a Mason jar and to a glass jar that's sealed.
So for the sake of this experiment,
just to limit how many different things that we're testing,
I didn't try anything where the container was actually open,
because that would just cause the berries to dry out.
Also for this part of the experiment,
just to have everything kind of be equal,
I washed all of the berries in the baking soda solution.
I'm not saying that was the winner,
I'm just saying that's the one that I used
for testing out these storage containers.
So we started off using the original container.
I took the container that the berries came in.
We had washed them, fully dried them,
which is key to storing berries.
You wanna make sure that they're completely dry.
You can do this by taking the berries
and putting them in a salad spinner
that's lined with a towel
and spinning out all the moisture.
You can also use a blow dryer or whatever,
you just wanna make sure that the berries are fully dry.
They don't like any moisture,
so putting them in the fridge even slightly wet,
they're gonna spoil a lot faster.
So I took those original berries,
washed them, dried them,
put them back in their original container.
And we also did the same thing with those berries,
washed them, dried them,
put them back in their original container,
this one lined with a paper towel, so two different ways.
Because strawberries like relative humidity,
this next version we tried a couple different ways.
So this one I'm using a storage container
which we sealed with a lid.
So in one way, we took the storage container,
put the berries in there, and sealed it.
The next version we took the same berries,
put them in a paper towel-lined storage container
and also sealed it.
And then we repeated that same process with both containers
except for we left the lid a little bit ajar,
so that way some of the moisture could escape,
because as I mentioned,
the strawberries do not wanna be wet.
It's the worst way to store them in the fridge.
The next version that we tried is with the Mason jar.
So we took a Mason jar, lined it with a paper towel,
stacked in the berries, and then sealed it up.
Conversely, we took another Mason jar,
no paper towel, put the strawberries in it,
and then sealed that and put them in the fridge.
All of these versions from the original container
to the storage container with the lid to the Mason jar
are going in the fridge after we wash and dry the berries.
And then the last method
is to actually take the strawberries
and to lay them out on a single layer on a tray
where they have space in between them.
So we tried that once with a paper towel
and once without a paper towel.
And then we covered this with a plastic wrap
to keep the berries so they were not exposed
to the air in the refrigerator.
I tried all of these different options
and I was actually surprised by the results.
We stored them in the original container,
we stored them in Mason jars,
we did the tray trick,
we stored them in containers that were sealed,
containers that were ajar,
we tried it with paper towels, without paper towels.
So before I get to the winner,
let me just tell you about some of the things I learned.
I expected the paper towel to actually help the berries.
Paper towels are integral when it comes to storing greens
like spinach, arugula, that sort of thing.
The paper towel keeps that moisture away
and keeps those greens fresh and crisp.
I thought the same thing was gonna happen with the berries.
They're very tender, they're delicate,
they're a snowflake, they're kind of Republican.
Sorry if if any of you are Republicans. (chuckles)
They're just not great, you know?
And so they like to actually spoil faster.
So I thought the paper towel was actually gonna be a winner.
It was not.
It worked for a few days,
but actually it seemed to just make things worse
after day 21.
The paper towel was not the way to go.
The other thing I thought was like, okay,
when you see containers of berries in the store,
they're not typically sealed, right?
They're perforated, there's airflow.
So I thought the containers that had the lid ajar
were actually going to be better
than the ones that were sealed.
Turns out that was also not true.
The ajar lids did not do as well.
And lastly was the Mason jar.
Now, I've tried this trick so many times,
'cause I keep seeing it on Pinterest,
I see it on Twitter, I see it on Instagram.
I have people tell me,
"I store them in Mason jars and they last forever,"
and I've tried it and they don't last forever.
So I thought, well, okay, here I'm putting it to the test.
The Mason jar was great for a little bit,
but once those berries started to turn,
all of the berries in the Mason jar
went faster than anything else.
The winner, the clear winner,
was a airtight, sealed container with no paper towel.
The berries in that container could have kept going.
While everything else was getting fuzzy
to the point where you might actually have to name it,
these berries were fresh, plump,
and still looking at edible by day 25.
So what's the best way to store your berries?
Well, here's what I think.
Wash them in that vinegar solution.
This is the combination of both.
Take the vinegar solution where you do three parts water,
one part vinegar, soak 'em for 15 minutes,
that kills all those mold spores.
Take those berries, fully dry them,
and then store them in a sealed container in the fridge.
Stored that way, I think your berries,
they could last for over a month that way.
So that's the best way to store strawberries.
(bright music)
(bright music continues)
(music fades)