Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome back to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This episode is the first of a regular monthly slot where I'm going to run through some ways to make the fresh seasonal fruit and veg that we've been buying last longer, go further and store better. So there's no point buying great food with the best intentions and just watching it rot. So once a month I will pick a category of fruit and veg and talk through how to save money and reduce waste on those foods.
For those of you who haven't seen The Foodies before, I build all of my content around a series of 12 children's books that are based in a veggie patch. There's a different story for each month of the year and all the fruit and veg characters are in season that month. So I base all of my content on those seasonal foods and during the course of the year children get to explore all types of fruit and veg.
So this monthly slot about saving foods and money will work with the same categories to make sure that we cover all of them during the year. So June's book of the month is Strawberry Surprise. So this month we're talking about fresh berries. They're one of the easiest foods to get children to eat, even sometimes get reluctant teenagers to put them in a smoothie, but they're also really not cheap and they don't hang around for long. We've all bought beautiful berries back from the shops and then found a punnet of juice and fur in the fridge, seemingly like five minutes later. So let's talk about how to stretch their shelf life a little bit further and what to do with them when they've gone a bit past their best. So firstly a few things to look for when you're buying berries. Most berries don't ripen once they're picked so what you see is what you get in terms of ripeness. Go for ones that look dry and firm, avoid any that are already looking a bit soft or have juice stains in their box because that's usually a sign that some of them have got squashed or they're starting to go off a bit.
Turn the punnet over if you can gently and check the bottom, that's where the mould tends to start and if you're buying from a market or somewhere that's selling loose berries ask when they were picked, the fresher ones will almost always, last longer at home. If you're lucky enough to grow berries and pick a load they do taste much better at room temperature but obviously go off faster at room temperature so if you're sure you're going to eat them in the next 24-ish hours, depending on how hot it is, you can keep them out of the fridge but anything that's not going to get eaten quickly unfortunately probably does need to be in the fridge if you want them to last more than a day or two. So once you've got your berries home or picked them a few things can really stop them going furry overnight. We want to keep them from getting too moist and as their own juices break down that's one of the main culprits in berries going off quickly because the natural yeasts and moulds that live all around us in the air love the sugars on the berry surface and they have lots of little porous crevices and bumps for them to grow. So we want to store them as dry as possible and so you shouldn't generally wash them when you get them home except for one situation which I'll outline in a minute. So basically you want airflow and dryness which is the opposite of those tightly packed plastic punnets that they come in.
So I'm going to run through a few hacks from the very least effort to the most effort and you can use whatever combination works for you.
So level one, if you've got zero time to deal with them when you're unpacking the shopping is to just try and add a little bit of drainage. So just open the punnet. If it's one of the ones that's got a lid, then pop a piece of folded kitchen roll into the lid, close it gently and turn it upside down to store it. That way any juices that come off the berries before you get a chance to look at them will soak into that bit of soaking paper, which will help. If it's a punnet with a film lid, and obviously you take the film lid off and there's no lid on it, then gently tip them out onto a plate, put the paper in the bottom and then pop them back into the punnet. So that's like the least effort to try and make them last the first couple of days.
Level two, if you have any bandwidth at all, is to take them out of the container they arrived in, pick out any really soft ones or any with wet bits on and just eat those straight away. Obviously if there's mouldy ones, then discard them. Put them in a container with a bit more space between the berries if you can, on a piece of kitchen paper or a clean tea towel even, and pop a lid on loosely to reduce the amount of air going in to circulate those moulds but not sealing it off altogether. So that's the sort of intermediate.
The level 3 exception to the don't ever get them wet rule is if you've already found some mouldy bits in your berries then you might want to try this to save the ones that remain by giving them a quick vinegar bath. I know that sounds really odd but a very dilute solution of about one part vinegar to three or more parts water can kill off mould spores that are there on the surface of the fruit and if it's dilute you really won't be able to taste the vinegar so obviously if you've got some mould into there already it will be on berries that you can't see it on so this is a great way of stopping it spreading and killing off those mould spores. So just take out any mouldy ones, soak the rest in a mixture of as I say one part vinegar to three parts water for five to ten minutes max and then gently take them out, don't bruise them, gently take them out, rinse them, let them dry thoroughly on some kitchen paper or a towel before you store them. So that might, if you've got some mouldy ones, make them last a little bit longer. Another alternative that some people use is to again take the mouldy ones out and give them a quick rinse and then to splash lemon juice into the container with the berries and sort of move them around in it to get some of that onto the berries, which can also help mould building up.
These methods might just buy you like a few more hours or another day if your berries are starting to turn just to buy you time to actually use them up. But you don't need to do these sorts of things if you've got perfectly clean, dry berries to start
Some people online swear by doing the vinegar bath and then storing them in glass jars and says that, you know, can make them last for ages. Others say actually it really doesn't make any difference. I saw a really quite interesting article where she tried out different methods. I'll link to that in the show notes and really you should try out what works for you.
Also knowing your fridge cold and warm zones is really important. Don't store berries in the coldest part of the fridge which is for most people near the bottom because that can often help them to start breaking down faster and speed up that deterioration.
Freezing is obviously a great option for storing berries, so here's a short Q &A that I recorded with Kate Hall from The Full Freezer about how to freeze berries.
Joanne (06:19)
So we've got Kate here, our freezer geek. She's come back to talk to us about foods of the month and how to freeze them. So Kate June is all about strawberries and other berries. So what do we do with berries? Loads of berries get wasted and they're really difficult to keep when you get them from the supermarket. So what can people do with their excess berries?
Kate (06:36)
So this is one of my absolute favorites and freezing berries is a almost daily activity in our house. As you say, the ones from the supermarket particularly just seem to go off so quickly. So freezing is something that we regularly do to preserve them. And it's such a simple process as well. Like this is one of my favorite things that if somebody is just starting out with trying to freeze things and they're not quite sure what to do first, then berries is one of the simplest things. you literally get your punnet from the supermarket, get your berries from the garden if you've grown them yourself, give them a really good wash in some nice cold water, dab them dry with some kitchen towel or with a very clean tea towel. And then if it's things like raspberries that are obviously quite small, they can just be left as they are. If you've got something like strawberries, you might want to cut them into halves or into quarters.
And then I just pop them on a lined tray that will fit in my freezer and I put them in the freezer. And then once they're solid, they can all be bagged up. I tend to keep them in bags. So I'll have a bag of strawberries. I'll have a bag of raspberries. I tend to keep them separate personally. ⁓ But if you want to bag them all up together, you absolutely can. And then we use them in a variety of ways. So I will use them to do things like make smoothies for my daughter.
I will use them for puddings, things like putting them with yoghurt. We have them on our porridge as well. So we'll put things like frozen blueberries into our porridge. We also use them in baking. So it can affect obviously because there's higher moisture content, you know, there will be a tendency for you to have a slightly soggier bake if you've used frozen berries. But to be honest, it's you know, it's never been so noticeable for us that it's caused any issues. And then they can be used, to make sorbets, they can be used so many different ways. And they can even be eaten from frozen. So one of the absolute favorite snacks in our house for my five year old, and I do have to put a, bit of a warning on this that of course, frozen fruit is a choking hazard. So particularly things like blueberries or grapes. ⁓ But you know, even if you've got chunks of frozen food, generally, you should always be keeping a close eye on on small children. But my daughter sees it as a treat to get a bowl of frozen mango, frozen pineapple, frozen strawberries, raspberries, like literally, we freeze all the fruits, but berries, particularly, ⁓ as you say, something that they just find they go off otherwise. So we will have whichever ones are fresh.
And if there are any in the punnet that are starting to turn, but they're not moldy, then they will immediately get washed dried straight into the freezer because I know that we can put them to use that way. So I would definitely say, you know, if you want to see more ideas of how you can use them, everything like go check out, I know I've got Can I freeze it? videos on that? I've got videos as well on my general Full Freezer Instagram page, which shares about this whole idea of eating fruit from frozen.
Joanne (09:43)
That's brilliant. Well, I'll definitely put those in the show notes because I know that berries definitely is one of those foods that people wish they could make more use of. So that's really helpful. Thanks, Kate.
Kate (09:51)
My pleasure. Thanks so much, Jo.
Joanne Roach (09:57)
So that's a good guide to freezing your berries, but if you do want to keep berries for later without using up freezer space, dehydrating is another great option. Dried berries are really good for adding to cereal or just for snacking on.
If you've got a cheap and cheerful dehydrator, you'll already know how easy that is. Just rinse the berries off, pat them dry and spread them out in a single layer. Follow the instructions for your machine, but most will take somewhere between 8 and 12 hours, depending on the size of the fruit.
We find that dehydrated strawberry slices work great. They're like slightly chewy and incredibly sweet and tart. They're beautiful. And raspberries are fine too. But we personally find that like currants blackberries and blueberries are too gritty when they're dehydrated. For us, the sort of seed in the tooth to fruity parts ratio is just not worth it. So we tend to freeze those.
We use our dehydrated strawberries and raspberries in homemade muesli and we store them in big glass jars with paper towels in the bottom to catch any remaining moisture that we missed. They last for absolutely ages.
OK, so what about the ones that you've got that have started to go a bit soft? They're maybe not mouldy, but they're not exactly lunchbox material anymore. Apart from popping them in the freezer, you can also make things from them. So they're great to add a little sweet and tart flavour to baking and obviously you can blend them into a smoothie. You can stir them into your porridge or overnight oats, can bake them into muffins or put them in your crumble or they're actually really good added into a scotch pancake batter before cooking and you can freeze those too once you've cooked
You can also make a quick fridge jam or compote or compote depending on how posh you are. Just heat them gently in a pan with just a tiny splash of water to stop them sticking at the beginning and a little bit of sugar or another sweetener.
Cook them for a few minutes to break them down into kind of a jammy sort of a sauce. It keeps in the fridge for a few days and is lovely over like yoghurt or ice cream, hot or cold. You can also put chia seeds in it and make it into a chia seed jam.
You can take this idea to the next level and make a syrup by using a little bit more sugar and a little bit more water and then cooking it down a little bit more and straining it off. A dash of the syrup that you get left over is lovely with sparkling water or if you fancy, in your glass of Prosecco.
You can also add berries to vinegar and let it infuse for a few weeks and then strain it off to make fancy dressings with. I'll put a link to some ideas for all of these in the show notes.
And then finally, a nice snack idea if you've just got a handful of slightly mushy berries is to mash them with a fork into some cream cheese and spread that onto a wrap or pile onto a bit of toast or an English muffin or a rice cake. Or you can mash it into yoghurt instead and make ice lollies out of the mixture. Kids can help by mashing the berries with a fork and then mixing everything together.
The main thing is to keep an eye on any berries at least once a day, remove and eat or discard any that are going over and freeze what you can't eat in time. For anything that doesn't need to have that fresh berry texture and is going to end up being used in a mushed up texture anyway, frozen berries are super cheap and just as tasty and nutritious, so don't feel like you have to use the punnets of fresh ones for everything.
So, hopefully you found some of that useful. I'll put links to some videos of storage techniques in the show notes as well as some of the recipes for using up berries and all of Kate's freezer links. I'll see you again on Monday when I'm talking to Susan from Two Dots Allotment about what gardening teaches children. So see you then and in the meantime happy eating!
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