are brought home from the farm. “We use a lot of strawberries on a daily basis — and one thing to remember is that fresh strawberries do not like water,” said Myles Underwood, culinary and operations director at Laney & Lu Café in Exeter. He said what this means for those who bring them home from the farm or store is that strawberries are not to be washed until they are ready to be used. Upon washing strawberries with water, they begin to quickly break down. “You will start to see white mold begin to grow,” he said. “If you see that, you want to remove that strawberry as quickly as possible from the bunch. Moisture is the big enemy there.” When you purchase fresh strawberries and leave them on the countertop, for instance, he said the maximum shelf life is about two or three days. If you purchase them and immediately put them in your fridge, he said you should expect a five- to seven-day shelf life. “The fridge can slow down that process,” he said. To extend the shelf life, he said he does not immediately wash strawberries. He instead cores out the green stem, lines a plastic container with paper towels and puts the stem side down. He said this method generally results in at least a week of freshness.
Another method is to wash the strawberries in a vinegar bath. “Use some distilled white vinegar and water and soak them for three to five minutes,” he said. “Rinse them very well. You don’t want to impart that vinegar flavor into the strawberry.” He said you can then place the strawberries in a paper towel-lined container with a tight seal. “Vinegar is an acid that kills bacteria,” he said. “If you use this method, you can get up to a two-week shelf life…. This is a great method if you have a ton of strawberries.” For those who really want to extend the life of their strawberries, especially if they have picked substantially more than can be eaten even in a two-week period of time, Underwood suggests flash-freezing them. With this method, you lightly wash them and pat them dry before removing the green stem. You then take the strawberries, lay them out on a sheet pan, freeze them on it for a couple of hours (or overnight) and bag them up. “They stay fresh — and the theory is that strawberries at the store are picked at their freshest, so this is a great way to keep them fresh for a long time and enjoy them when they are not in season,” he said.
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