Joanne Roach (00:00)
On today's Food for Kids, I have some tips on how to store your berries so they last longer and some recipe ideas for when you have some to use up.
Joanne Roach (00:22)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This is a regular monthly slot where I run through some money saving tips to make the fresh seasonal fruit and veg we've been buying last longer, go further and store better. The idea is to help you get the best out of your fresh produce so that you spend less, waste less and actually get around to eating what you've bought.
As you might know from previous months, I build my content around seasonal produce. And my main product that I sell is a set of 12 children's books set in a veggie patch. Each book focuses on different fruit and veg that are in season that month. And because they were chosen to make sure that children explore lots of different plant families during the year, I use the same produce from the books to talk through storage and money tips here in these episodes so that we cover them too in the course of the year.
This month, the book of the Month is Strawberry Surprise, so we're talking about how to store and use strawberries but also other fresh berries too. Whether you have berry plants in your garden and want to make sure that all that gardening effort doesn't go to waste or if you're taking advantage of them coming into and being a bit cheaper and tasting more full and juicy, this is the episode to make the most of them. Berries are generally one of the easiest foods to get many children to try 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 five minutes later. So let's talk about how to stretch their shelf life a bit further and what to do with them when they're past their best.
First of all, a few things to look for when you're buying berries.
Most berries don't ripen once they've picked, so what you see is what you get. Go for ones that look dry and firm. Avoid any that are already looking a bit soft or have juice stains in the box, so that's usually a sign that some of them are squashed or starting to go off already. Turn the punnet over if you can and check the bottom. That's where the mould tends to start. And if you're buying from a market or somewhere selling loose berries, ask when they were picked. Fresher ones will almost always last longer at home.
If you're lucky enough to grow berries and you pick a load, they do taste much better if you keep them at room temperature, but obviously they also go off faster at room temperature. So if you're sure you'll eat them in the first 24 hours, depending on the temperature in your house, you can keep them out of the fridge. But any that are not going to get eaten quickly, unfortunately, probably do have to go into the fridge if you want them to last more than a day or so.
So once you've bought your berries home or picked them, a few quick things can really help stop them going furry overnight. We want to keep them from getting too moist and as their juices break down, that's the main culprit in berries going off quickly. As well as the natural yeasts and moulds that live all around us feasting on the berry sugars, they have lot of little porous crevices and bumps for moulds to grow in. So we want to store them as dry as possible and so generally you shouldn't wash them when you get them home except for one situation which I'll outline in a minute. You basically want airflow and dryness which is the opposite of the tightly packed plastic punnets that they come in.
So I'm gonna run through a few hacks from the least effort to the most effort and you can use whatever combination works for you in whatever kind of busy week you've got going on.
Level one, if you have zero time to deal with them when you're unpacking the shopping, is to just try to add some drainage. So simply open the punnet. If it's one of those ones with a lid, pop a piece of folded kitchen roll in the lid, close it and turn it upside down to store. That will give it a bit of soaking paper to take up any juices and allow air to get to the ones that were previously at the bottom. If it's a punnet with a film lid, just gently tip them out, put the paper in the bottom and then put them back in again.
Level two, if you have any bandwidth, is to take them out of the container they arrived in, pick out any really soft ones or any with wet bits and eat those straight away. Put them in a container with a bit more space between the berries on a piece of kitchen paper or a clean tea towel and pop a lid on loosely to reduce the amount of air going in but not seal it off altogether.
The level three is the exception to the “don't wet them” rule, which is if you've already found some mouldy bits in your berries, then you might want to try and save the others by giving them a quick vinegar bath. It sounds odd, but a diluted solution of one part vinegar to about three to four parts water can kill off a lot of mould spores. And if it's dilute, you won't be able to taste the vinegar. So take out the mouldy ones, soak the rest in this mixture for five to 10 minutes max, gently rinse them and then let them dry thoroughly before storing. An alternative that some people prefer is to splash some lemon juice into the berries and gently agitate them around a bit to get some of it onto each berry, which can also prevent mould building.
These methods might buy you a day or so more if your berries are already on the turn, but you don't need to do them if you already have a perfectly clean dry punnet to start with.
Some people swear by storing berries in glass jars, others say it doesn't make any difference. So I guess you should try what works for you. Knowing your fridge's cold and warm zones is really important. Don't store berries in the coldest part of the fridge, that's usually, but not always towards the bottom because that can often speed up deterioration.
If you have more berries than you can use up, then freezing is a great option for berries. And so it's time for our quick monthly chat with Kate Hall from The Full Freezer about how to freeze berries.
Joanne (05:58)
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 (06:15)
So this is one of my absolute favourites and freezing berries is an 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 regularly do to preserve them. And it's such a simple process as well. Like this is one of my favourite 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.
So you literally get your punnet 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 pop 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 will 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 obviously because there's a higher moisture content, 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 never been so noticeable for us that it's caused any issues. And then they can be used, to make sorbets, in really just, so many different ways.
And they can even be eaten from frozen. So one of the absolute favourite 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 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, you say, something that we 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 mouldy, they will immediately get washed dried into the freezer because I know that we can put them to use that way.
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 (09:07)
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 more use of. So that's really helpful. Thanks, Kate.
Kate (09:14)
My pleasure. Thanks so much, Joe.
Joanne Roach (09:20)
So that's freezing. If you're someone who likes to do some dehydrating and you want to save on freezer space, then dehydrating is a great option for some berries too. Strawberry slices work great. Whole raspberries are pretty good for cereals and snacks, but we personally find that currants, blackberries and blueberries are too gritty. The ratio of picking the seeds from your teeth to enjoying any fruity flesh flavour is just not worth it. So we tend to just freeze those.
We use dehydrated strawberries and raspberries in muesli and we store them in glass jars with paper towels to catch any remaining moisture that we missed. And they last ages, a year or two.
Overall, with storing berries, the main thing is to check them once a day, remove and eat or discard any that are going over and freeze what you can't eat in time. For any recipes that don't need the fresh berry texture or are going to be mushed up anyway, don't forget that frozen berries are cheap and just as tasty and nutritious. So don't feel like you have to use the punnets of fresh ones for everything.
OK, so that's storing them. What can you make with them? Berries are great to add a little sweet and tart flavour to baking, both inside a cake itself or as a tart filling to something else that's sweet. We love to put fresh strawberries between two halves of a Victoria sponge alongside the cream or buttercream instead of jam. Berries go great in muffins, blueberries and raspberries work particularly well. I'll link to some recipes.
Or most berries work brilliantly in or on a cheesecake. That slight tartness cuts through the creamy sweetness. I'll link to an example of a lovely cheesecake with raspberries in, but you can easily swap in different berries and it would totally work.
Berries famously pair well with cream, so you can put them into a pavlova or an Eton mess. Children can sometimes find those a bit difficult with the different textures all mixed together. So you can also do a deconstructed one where there's a pile of berries, a scoop of ice cream or cream, and then a mini meringue on the side so they can eat them separately but still be eating the same as other people. I'll link to a recipe where it also has a homemade meringue in case you fancy making that together with your child, as they can find the whole whipping the eggs up to stiff peaks very entertaining especially if you're prepared to put the bowl above your head.
Obviously berries are great blended into smoothies either as the star of the show or just as a mix ingredient. I'll link to a version with and without dairy to try out, and these are great for berries that have gone soft as well as berries from the freezer so you can make them up with whatever combo you have.
For breakfast, you can stir in berries to your porridge or overnight oats. You can have them in cereal or if your child doesn't like things mixed in, then just having a bowl of berries on the side of the cereal means they may well pick at a few. Berries are also really good added into scotch pancake batter and I'll link to a recipe for that. They freeze really well too.
You can also make a quick compote with over soft berries, compote just being a jammy mixture with bigger pieces that you keep in the fridge. Just heat them gently in a pan with a splash of water if needed and a little sugar or honey and cook them down a little bit until they start to break up. This keeps in the fridge for a few days and it's lovely to spoon over ice cream or yoghurt or even on toast. I'll link to a recipe that gives you some of the ratios you need. If your child likes raspberry ripple ice cream, you can blend or squish a raspberry compote down to a thinner sauce and spoon it onto vanilla ice cream and then they can have fun rippling it through their own ice cream.
You can also take this compote idea to the next level and make a syrup using a little more sugar and water and cooking them down and then strain them and keep the liquid. A dash of that syrup is lovely with sparkling water or, if you're fancy, in a glass of Prosecco. A similar idea but for savoury is to add them to vinegar and let it infuse to make fancy dressings with. I'll put a link to some ideas for all of those in the show notes.
And finally, a nice snack if you have a handful of slightly mushy berries is to mash them into some cream cheese and spread it into a wrap or pile it on toast, onto an English muffin or a rice cake. This is a fun one for kids to make because they can mash or bash the berries into the cream cheese in as big or small pieces as they like, and pile it onto whatever bready base they like. I'll link to a recipe if you prefer to follow ratios from a recipe.
Kids can also really enjoy mashing berries into yoghurt and making ice lollies out of the mixture. They can add on any toppings they like, like sprinkles or crushed nuts. I'll link to a recipe on my website that is set up for kids to follow and make themselves, which uses blackberries but could be any squishy berry.
OK, so that's my roundup on storing and using up berries. I'll pop some links to Kate's videos on freezing all of these in the show notes, along with quite a few recipes for the suggestions. I hope to see you next time for another episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.
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