Load Up on Strawberries this Season: We Have the Recipes! (2024)

FAQs

What do you put on strawberries to make them tastier? ›

Place the berries in a bowl and sprinkle on a little granulated sugar. I use 1-2 tablespoons of sugar for a pint of strawberries, depending on how sweet they are to begin with. If you want to be a little fancier, use vanilla sugar.

Add a little sugar and salt! Wash your strawberries, cut them, and hit them with a pinch of salt and a couple good three-finger pinches of granulated sugar, give them a little tossy-toss, and watch them magically start to darken and get extra juicy.

It's also a hands-off recipe: Just toss strawberries with sugar and let time take care of the rest. The sugar will coax out the berries' juices, creating a thick and succulent syrup, while the strawberries will deepen in flavor and soften in texture. The result is a versatile, sweet-tart topping that's hard to resist.

"Strawberries are in season from mid-May to early July in the eastern and midwestern northern states," says Dr. Gail Nonnecke, a horticulture professor at Iowa State University and member of The North American Strawberry Growers Association.

Growing Sweet Strawberries

If your strawberries aren't sweet, look at your current soil conditions. Strawberries perform best in well-drained, fertile, and slightly acidic soils. In fact, these plants tend to yield more and are sweeter when grown in compost-enriched, sandy soil.

Chop up all your cleaned berries, throw them in a bowl and mix them up with some sugar. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours. The sugar and natural acidic juices from the strawberries mix and macerate/marinate the berries in sweetness. No need to make a simple syrup – the berry juices do it for you.

The sweet of the strawberry would work very well with the sharp bite of ginger – perhaps candied ginger with strawberries in the yogurt? In addition to mint, you may also consider complementary herbs such as lavender, tarragon, rosemary, angelica, fennel and lemon grass.

Strawberries have rich flavor; sugar, acid, phenolic content, and aroma all together make the wonderful fruit. Many factors are assumed to affect strawberry flavor. Some are supported by scientific evidence, some may be simply people's impressions.

The taste difference is marginal at best so if you're desperate for a sprinkling of sugar over your strawberries, Stevia is the healthier option. If you're looking for something that's easier to mix into a bowl, agave syrup is another naturally-occurring and tasty alternative that will sweeten strawberries.

Macerating fruit simply means to soften or steep it. It might sound fancy, but the process is really quite simple: Macerating typically involves adding sugar and often a liquid (like fruit juice or liquor) to fruit, and letting it all marinate until the fruit is soft or more tender.

What month are strawberries the sweetest? ›

Those are the ideal times because the farmers harvested a lot of strawberries in December, the start of the winter holidays. By late January, the remaining fruits from the harvest would have reached their peak sweetness. Exposure to sunlight makes strawberries taste sweeter.

Albion strawberries have a darker color, both internally and externally, and a consistently sweeter flavor than most strawberries. The plant is known for its large, symmetrical fruit, which is mostly conical and very firm. The high sugar content makes it ideal for use in desserts, as well as eating out of hand.

Monk fruit sweetener is a great alternative to sweeteners containing sugars. It does not add any flavor or aftertaste. If the strawberries are light pink or red, leave them out of the fridge for a few days to ripen. It will give the sugars more time to develop, and the strawberries will become sweet.

Sprinkle 1 Tbsp. granulated sugar per 1 lb. strawberries, stir to combine in a large bowl, then cover and refrigerate the mixture for at least 30 minutes.