Cleaning and Preparing Your Strawberries

So your Strawberries made it home...well most of them!  After you have eaten your fair share, you have to 'do' something with them.  First order of business:

CLEAN and PREP

• Do not wash them until you are ready to process them.
• USE your Fruit and Veggie Wash!  Check the pics on prior post if you need convincing!
• I usually put them in a sink full of cold water with my Environne Wash and swish them around as I go.
• I like to pull the green tops off at this point too.  Less little greenie's left in my finished product this way.  Just leave the greens in the sink.
• Place the 'topless' berries in the other side of sink.  They aren't bashful about being naked!
• Give them a cool rinse with clean water.
• Let Drain and Dry for a bit.

• Now you have to "hull" the berries.  This term means removing the actual stem.  You will see this multi-purpose tool alot thru the harvest season....  IT ROCKS!  Much faster than the ole paring knife and there is little to no waste!  The roughly serrated end slips right into the flesh of the berry and then you give it a 360 turn.  It also works great for cleaning out any bad spots.

Voila!  Berry cleaning complete! 

Now decide, are you making jam, pies, freezing...ugh...endless possibilities!  We are going to do a combination next!