(fun music)
- Hi, I'm Jerry James Stone,
and in today's video I'm gonna show you
how to store strawberries for weeks.
This simple method is perfect for keeping fresh strawberries
in the refrigerator ready to eat longer.
Let me show you how.
(rousing circus music)
Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna
wash our strawberries in a mixture of
water, vinegar, and baking soda.
The reason that we're doing that is a couple of things.
The vinegar is really great at killing mold and like,
you know, e-coli and all these like really bad, bad things.
And the baking soda is really,
really wonderful at removing pesticides.
In fact, a recent study found that baking soda,
when you soak vegetables in a mixture of water
and baking soda for about 15 minutes,
it's actually better at removing pesticide residue
from those vegetables than like bleach.
Even though it's like less harsh,
it works better, so that's what we're gonna do.
So the first thing we're gonna do is we're
gonna take a combination of three parts
water and one part white vinegar,
and then, we're gonna add baking soda to it.
So for every two cups of liquid
you want one teaspoon of baking soda.
Okay, so we have our water.
Now we're gonna add in our white vinegar.
So it says three parts water and one part vinegar.
Now we're gonna work on our baking soda.
I'm gonna do this slowly because if you
ever made one of those volcanoes in grade school
you know that baking soda reacts to acidity,
so that's gonna cause this to kinda bubble a little bit.
Just like that.
Now I'm just gonna add the strawberries to this mixture
and store it in there for about 15 minutes to remove
all the mold, all the bad stuff, all the pesticides.
Now, obviously, if you're buying organic
that will also not have pesticides on it,
but even in organic farming there is
organic materials that are still used that you
probably still want to have taken off your fruit.
Now, some people have mentioned,
I've seen this in blogs and other places like,
oh, the strawberries are gonna absorb that vinegar flavor.
Here's the thing.
The reason that they're floating is
because strawberries are 92% water.
They're not gonna absorb the
vinegar flavor from this process.
Okay, so the strawberries are soaking in our
solution of vinegar, water, and baking soda.
We're just gonna let them soak for about 15 minutes.
Just, you know, every now and then,
kinda swish 'em around, move 'em around, push 'em down,
make sure that they get fully covered in the solution.
So here's a little fun fact about strawberries.
They're actually not a berry.
Did you know that?
Like, bananas are berries, avocados are berries,
watermelons are berries.
Botanically speaking, there's all these like
requirements for being a berry,
and the strawberry does not meet it.
The first thing is that you need your seeds on the inside.
Another fun fact about the strawberry
is that those aren't seeds.
Those are actually the plant's ovaries
on the outside of the berry.
So, hey, the more you know.
Okay, so we've let the berries soak for about 15 minutes.
Now we're gonna transfer them to a salad spinner,
but this is really important,
you want to line the salad spinner with a paper towel.
Strawberries are fragile, as you know, and if you don't,
they're gonna bounce around and get really, really mushy.
So the paper towel not only
absorbs the liquid that's left over,
but it also protects them from bouncing
around and being damaged during it.
Okay, so, we took the strawberries out of the liquid,
we put them into the salad spinner with a paper towel,
now we're just gonna spin them dry.
(spinning sound )
Okay, so, after we dried the strawberries in
the salad spinner we're gonna transfer them to a
container which we're also gonna line with paper towels.
So strawberries really like being cold,
and they like being in a humid environment.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna line it
the paper towels to absorb any sort of excess
liquid that might build up around the strawberries,
but we're not gonna actually completely seal
the container so that way they can breathe
and store them in the crisper drawer that way.
This process will actually make your strawberries
last at least up to 10 days, if not more,
because you're removing all of the stuff
that causes the berries to spoil.
That said, strawberries are a little bit
different than some other fruits.
They're a nonclimactic fruit,
which means that they continue to,
they don't continue to ripen after they're picked.
For example, avocados will ripen, peaches, bananas,
those things ripen, those are climactic foods,
they'll actually ripen after they're picked.
Strawberries, once they're picked,
they just start to rot, that's what they're going to do.
By removing all of the bad stuff you can actually
expand how long they'll last after picking.
Don't close it all the way.
Just kinda leave it a little bit ajar.
Store it in the crisper drawer and you're set to go.
They should last up to 10 days, if not longer, this way.
If you like this video, hey, give me a thumbs up.
If there's something that you wanna see,
drop a comment below.
And also, I release new videos every single week,
so please subscribe.
I'll see you guys next time.
(rousing circus music)