Market Strawberries Taste Like Strawberries
Don't we all share the same experience?  When the first strawberries appear in our grocery stores, we rush to admire the beautiful big red berries, all uniform in size and so perfect in appearance. We sort through the plastic boxes like detectives, craning our necks as we peer through all sides of the plastic to make sure we don't bring home a box with a mushy strawberry.
 
We take the berries home, wash and hull them, and pop them into our mouths. Then we wonder what happened. Instead of that succulent strawberry taste, we often end up with a mouthful of paste with some vague strawberry flavoring. Since strawberries are strawberries, even if they aren't delicious, we don't quite muster a "why bother" type of response, but we do quietly mull over our disappointment. Why don't our strawberries taste like strawberries? Well, our Market strawberries do.
 
Market Strawberries Are the Real Thing
Market strawberries haven't been bred for uniformity of size and ease of packing and shipping. They've usually been picked on Market day, so they're fresh. They are by no means uniform. A Market box is likely to have an assortment of sizes, all tousled together, small and big alike. That's the charm; they have all been picked when ripe. Their texture is the velvety red we all associate with good strawberries, and their taste is one of the defining moments of summer. When we eat a good strawberry, we know why strawberries are the most popular berries of all.
 
Washing and Storing Strawberries
We all know what to do with strawberries - wash, hull and eat. There are a few things though that we can do to enhance that taste experience.
 
Hull Only After Washing
Strawberries are meant for immediate consumption. Of course that's usually not a problem. The trick to keeping that fresh strawberry taste is to hull them only after washing them and only right before eating. If you pinch out the stems (a grapefruit spoon does this handily) and then wash the berries, your berries are likely to absorb water through the stem area and become a bit waterlogged, degrading the taste.
 
Don't Hull If Refrigerating
If you can't eat all your berries right away, you can store them in the refrigerator for two or three days. But don't expect refrigeration to enhance the flavor. It doesn't. Wash your berries and blot them dry. Don't hull them. Store them in the refrigerator on a paper towel covered with plastic wrap. (I line a glass casserole dish with paper towels.)
 
If you have to, you can keep your berries on the counter for two or three hours. Storing them at room temperature for longer periods can lead to overripe berries. And we don't want that!
 
Freezing Berries
Freezing strawberries is super easy. Wash and dry the berries. Place them on a cookie sheet, with sides not touching, and pop the cookie sheet into the freezer. When the berries are frozen, remove and pack into containers or plastic bags for the freezer. This method also works well for other berries.
 
Freezer Jam
Now that's for next week's newsletter. If you've never made freezer jam from fresh or frozen berries, this is the time for it. The process is easy, it does not require any canning apparatus, and the results allow you to enjoy the taste of summer on your toast and croissants in the winter.