Ingredient

Strawberry

A strawberry stops developing sugar the moment it leaves the plant. Whatever it tastes of in the shop is what it will taste of on the plate, and nothing on a windowsill changes that. Almost every practical fact about buying and keeping them follows from it.

Non-climacteric, and what that means at the shop

Fruit divides into those that carry on ripening after picking and those that do not. Bananas, avocados and pears are in the first group; strawberries are firmly in the second. A pale strawberry will go soft, and it will go mouldy, but it will never get sweeter.

This is why supermarket strawberries so often disappoint. They are bred and picked for the journey rather than the plate, and no amount of patience at home recovers what was not there at harvest.

The colour to look for is a deep even red all the way to the shoulders, with no white or green ring around the hull. Smell is the better test still: a strawberry worth buying smells of strawberry through the packaging.

Keeping a punnet alive

The default handling loses half of them.

1. Do not wash them until the moment you eat them. Water on the skin is what mould needs, and a washed strawberry is on a clock.
2. Take them out of the punnet as soon as you get home and go through them. One mouldy fruit infects its neighbours within a day.
3. Spread them in a single layer on a plate or tray lined with kitchen paper. Piled fruit crushes itself.
4. Refrigerate if you are keeping them more than a day, uncovered or loosely covered so moisture can escape.
5. Bring them back to room temperature for at least half an hour before eating. Cold suppresses the aroma almost completely.
6. Hull them after washing, never before. A hulled strawberry fills with water.

What to do with ones that are not good enough to eat raw

This is most of the strawberries most people buy.

• Macerate them. Sliced, with a spoonful of sugar and a squeeze of lemon, left for twenty minutes. The sugar draws out juice and the result is far better than the sum of it.
• Roast them. Halved, a little sugar, a hot oven for fifteen minutes. Concentrates them completely and rescues a flavourless punnet.
• Balsamic and black pepper, the classic Italian treatment, which works because the acid and the pepper supply what the fruit lacks.
• Into a fool or a mess, where cream and meringue do the heavy lifting.
• Freeze them for smoothies or sauce. Open-freeze on a tray first so they do not fuse into a block.
• A quick sauce: simmer with sugar and lemon for five minutes and sieve. Better than anything bought.

Why the jam is difficult

Strawberry jam is the one most people fail at, and the reason is chemistry rather than technique.

Low pectin

Strawberries carry very little. Without added pectin, a preserving sugar, or another fruit, there is nothing to build a set.

Low acid

Pectin needs acid to gel. This is why almost every strawberry jam recipe calls for lemon juice, and why leaving it out gives syrup.

High water

They are around ninety per cent water, so a lot has to boil off, and long boiling destroys the fresh flavour you were preserving.

The usual fixes

Jam sugar with added pectin; a proportion of redcurrant or gooseberry; or macerating overnight in sugar first so less boiling is needed.

Whole fruit

Small berries left whole and macerated before a short boil keep their shape. Cut fruit collapses.

Common questions