Strawberries are the perfect treat. Here you will find tips and recipes for making sweet strawberries for jam and dessert and salty for burgers and salads.
Bonn (dpa / tmw) – Strawberries are one of the most sensual fruits. We will take you to the summer kitchen, where you will prepare beautiful and delicious strawberry dishes.
What to pay attention to when buying strawberries?
It’s actually quite easy:
- Good and ripe strawberries are evenly and intensely red. “Strawberries don’t ripen later,” says strawberry farmer Robert Dahl, founder and owner of Karl’s Adventure Village. – They are either ripe or not.
- Strawberries that are still green or white under the sepals are unripe and have a sour taste.
- In addition to the shiny surface of the strawberry skin, the sepals also indicate the freshness of the fruit. They should be fresh and green.
- Overripe strawberries of a dull-dark-red color. They have lost their pleasant aroma and sometimes taste slightly fermented.
- Strawberries are also extremely sensitive to pressure. If there are only minor surface pressure points, this will not affect the taste or shelf life.
- Leave the bruised strawberries in the fruit bowl. They spoil quickly at room temperature. And: Rotten fruit also infects your immediate neighbors.
Tip I: During transportation, strawberries must be at the top of the basket. Also, don’t leave them exposed to extreme heat for long periods of time, such as in a hot car.
Tip II: Whoever buys directly from the producer at the stand will receive strawberries that have not yet been transported over long distances.
Do you need to wash strawberries? If so, how?
If you want to keep strawberries in the refrigerator for another day or two, you must store them with leaves and unwashed.
Anyone who wants to eat or process the fruit directly does not necessarily wash it. “It’s a matter of faith—we don’t wash it,” says Robert Dahl. You will hardly be able to dry them without wringing them out.
Strawberries, as a rule, are not very dirty because they lie on straw during growth. All the better if the fruit comes from your own garden.
And if strawberries are sprayed during cultivation, then this is done already during flowering. Thus, according to Dahl, there is nothing on the surface that can be washed away.
Depending on the variety, strawberries don’t like to be washed more than others, says Rosvita Schemm, owner of the Zehelein-Schemm strawberry farm in Franconia: “You can wash the ‘Elsanta’ more easily, but you shouldn’t wash the ‘Mieze Schindler’ at all.”
If you want to wash strawberries, be sure to use the whole fruit, that is, with a cup.
Advice: Rinse them lightly, then lay the strawberries out on paper towels to dry.
How to cut strawberries correctly?
To enjoy strawberries in their pure form or, depending on the recipe, to process them, you must first remove the seeds, that is, the green sepals.
If you take the sepals between your fingers and gently pull them out, you will ensure that as little pulp is lost as possible.
Depending on the variety, a peculiar small cone is extracted from the fruit. “The hole it creates is smaller in some varieties and larger in others,” says Schemm.
If you want to go faster, you can simply cut the green leaves with a sharp knife. But you will lose more fruit this way.
In its pure form, in quark or in the form of jam – what else can strawberries do?
Of course, strawberries are a treat from hand to mouth. But they also score points when used in traditional jams, cakes or quark. If you can’t get enough of fruit, here are some recipes.
Recipe: Strawberry smoothie
Robert Dahl, for example, loves the taste of strawberry smoothies: “I feel like when I eat a few strawberries out of a bowl, they’re not as strawberry-like as when I process them into a smoothie.”
Preparation is very simple:
Take 500 grams of strawberries and mix with a hand blender in a tall container.
“In 60 seconds, you have a 100 percent strawberry smoothie—deliciously delicious,” says Dahl. His recipe for strawberry tiramisu also makes me want to try it.
Recipe: strawberry tiramisu
the ingredients (for four people):
- 300 grams of strawberries
- 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar
- 150 ml of orange juice
- 100 grams of cream
- 250 g of mascarpone
- 3 tablespoons of egg liqueur (or beat 2 egg yolks with powdered sugar)
- Approximately 150 g of lady’s fingers
- 1 tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 square dessert dish
How to cook tiramisu in 7 steps:
- 1. Cut the strawberries into small pieces and mix with a tablespoon of powdered sugar.
- 2. Pour orange juice into a soup plate.
- 3. Whip the cream until stiff, then mix the mascarpone with the remaining icing sugar and the eggnog (or alternative). Then add the strawberries first and then the cream.
- 4. Put two tablespoons of this cream on the bottom of the mold.
- 5. Briefly moisten both sides of the cookies with orange juice and line the mold with them.
- 6. It’s time to layer: spread it with half of the cream and lay out another layer of cookies. Finally, spread the rest of the cream.
- 7. Leave in the refrigerator for two hours and sprinkle with cocoa powder before serving.
Recipe: Strawberry boats with cream cheese
Roswitha Schemm’s Strawberry Boats recipe is perfect for a summer party. Guaranteed: the plate will soon be empty.
Ingredients (for a large plate):
- 500 g of large strawberries (“Elianny”, “Sweet Mary XXL”, “Symphony” varieties are very suitable
- 100 grams of cream cheese
- cream
- green pepper
Quick preparation in 5 steps:
- 1. Briefly wash the strawberries, spread them on kitchen paper and let them dry
- 2. Cut the fruit in half with a cup and place on a plate with the flat side up.
- 3. Mix the cream cheese with a little cream so that the mixture can be poured into the piping nozzle and piped.
- 4. Make small lids on the halved strawberries.
- 5. Lightly season with green pepper from a pepper mill.
Strawberries also have a savory taste
The sweet and juicy taste of strawberries can also be combined with quite spicy ingredients. Fruits go very well in fresh summer salads.
Roswitha Schemm’s light summer salad, for example, combines cheese and green asparagus. And Karla’s strawberry burger is enriched with salted and peppered strawberries.
Recipe: light summer salad with strawberries
Ingredients (for four people):
- 250 g of seasonal strawberries (for example, “Lambada”, “Korona”, “Sweet Mary XXL”, “Mieze Schindler”, “Mara des bois”)
- 100 g of feta or goat cheese
- A bowl of colorful salad from different lettuce leaves
- 1 kg of green asparagus
- salt
- 1 tablespoon of honey
50 ml of white balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoons of salad oil
- green pepper
For submission: edible flowers, preferably blue borage flowers or small cornflower flowers (remove the lower part of the flower, just pluck)
6 steps – how to prepare a fresh salad:
- 1. Wash the asparagus, peel from the bottom and cut into pieces 5-8 cm long
- 2. Fry briefly in hot oil, the asparagus should still be crispy.
- 3. Clean, wash, dry the salad and put it on a dish or plates.
- 4. Serve with asparagus, diced or shredded cheese and strawberries.
- 5. For the dressing, mix balsamic vinegar, honey and salad oil and pour over the salad.
- 6. Sprinkle green pepper on top and decorate with edible flowers.
Serve immediately after serving.
Recipe: Strawberry burger with homemade mayonnaise
Ingredients (for the burger):
- 1 hamburger bun
- 1 piece of chicken breast
- A little arugula
- A few tablespoons of olive oil
- 200 grams of strawberries
- Salt pepper
For homemade mayonnaise:
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of mustard
- 1 tablespoon of vinegar
- 150 ml of oil
- 2 tablespoons of chopped nuts
Here’s how it works:
- Season the chicken
- Remove stems from strawberries, cut into slices and season with salt, pepper and 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- For mayonnaise, beat the egg until frothy, add mustard and vinegar, stirring, add a little olive oil. Add the nuts and season with salt and pepper
- Fry the chicken on both sides
- Wash arugula, season with salt, pepper and vinegar, add a little olive oil.
- Bake the buns, now fold them to your heart’s content
Bought too many – can you freeze strawberries?
Did you buy too many strawberries or want to enjoy strawberries out of season? Then you can easily freeze them.
Here’s how it’s done:
Robert Dahl had a good experience with pre-pureeing strawberries. Then they are filled, for example, in jam jars and put in the freezer. “The puree tastes really good when you defrost it again,” Dahl says.
If you freeze whole berries, you should act carefully:
If the strawberries are pre-washed, then they should be laid out on kitchen paper and dried well, otherwise there will be frozen water on the fruits or they will stick together in lumps.
If you can quickly free up a freezer compartment, place the berries on a small shock-freeze tray. “Then the surface has already frozen a little,” says Rosvita Schemm. Then the strawberries are placed in the freezer, and if necessary, they can be taken out separately without any problems.
Robert Dahl also freezes strawberries for the Karls sale and makes jam from the thawed fruit.
Advice from an expert: “If you freeze strawberries, and then on December 15, make five jars of jam from them, the jam will still be tasty. If you made jam in June and ate it on December 15, it won’t be as tasty.”
Recipe for quick strawberry jam:
Before freezing, weigh the strawberries and pack them into the freezer in kilogram bags.
Therefore, you can take the package as needed and boil it 1:2 with 500 g of canned sugar to make delicious strawberry jam.
All about the strawberry season: where to pick or buy strawberries, what to look for and why strawberries are so good.
