Balsamic Strawberries plus the Helpful Hint re washing strawberries

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Balsamic Strawberries plus the Helpful Hint re washing strawberries

9 yrs ago

Balsamic strawberries recipe

These strawberries are delicious the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar cancel each other out on the sweet and sour scale so the berries are left with a really delicious sauce. You can serve them over ice-cream with crumbled meringue for a great dessert.

Ingredients:

2 punnets of strawberries, topped and halved
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup brown sugar

Method:

Place all ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine. Make sure that all the brown sugar has dissolved.

Cover and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Stir every 30 minutes.

Serve over ice-cream.

Notes

Soaking strawberries in this combination is called maseration. It applies to soaking fruit in anything like vinegar or liquer.
The flavour combination will surprise you and this is a really simple dessert that takes little preparation at serving time. It's great for dinner parties and if I am looking to make it fancy, I crumble meringue over the top for texture.

You can also put vanilla /vanilla bean seeds in the vinegar mix and put freshy ground black pepper on the top when serving.

HOW TO STOP STRAWBERRIES GOING OFF.

If you've paid $6 for a punnett of fresh berries, it's really annoying to look in the fridge the next day and find fuzzy mould growing on them. Here’s a tip worth sharing on how to keep them fresh:

Wash them with vinegar.

When you get your berries home,

prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider probably work best)and ten parts water. (1/10)

Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around.

Drain, rinse if you want (mixture is so diluted you can't taste the vinegar,) and pop in the fridge.

The vinegar kills any mould spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit, and voila!

Raspberries will last a week or more, and strawberries go almost two weeks without getting mouldy and soft.

6 comments

Sandi that looks great will give it a try. Love the way you put up helpful tips. Thankyou.

Abby

9 yrs ago

Sandi

After draining do you dry them off on tissues or something so they are dry when they go into refrigerator ?

Apple cider wash sounds interesting too

Sandi (SA)

9 yrs ago

I usually just let them drain on a piece of paper towel for a while Abby, but I do stand them separately. Then just pop them in the fridge.

Looks interesting Sandi. I have never heard of balsamic vinegar which shouldn't surprise anyone so I did a google on it. Seems that it can be easy to buy fake stuff which are mostly sugar and caramel colouring.

So before I venture to the supermarket I would like to know reputable brands and which supermarkets sell that. Coles, Woolies or IGA as no Aldi here.

I got my info from "How To Buy Balsamic Vinegar
A simple guide to Italy’s black gold"

Sandi (SA)

9 yrs ago

Gerry I think you will find that any Balsamic Vinegar that comes from MODENA is the true Balsamic.

You can get light (white) and dark. The one I buy in the dark is Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, made by Mazzetti. I purchased it in either Woollies or Coles.

The light (white) one I purchased in Woollies and it's a Select product just called WHITE Condiment.

Try both to see which one you like, the recipe is for the dark one. You can use them on salads too by adding a bit of oil and mxing.

Yes, the strawberries in balsamic and sugar are great.

Saw an easy sweet in the November issue of the free magazine Coles put out.

Just get a litre of ice cream and stir in some coarsely chopped caramel fudge (40g).

Caramel Fudge

Cottees Ice Magic chocolate flavour ice crem topping to serve

fresh raspberries or strawberries. Mix the fudge into the ice cream and put the mix into individual dishes or moulds, freeze, then serve with the Ice Magic poured over and topped with the berries.

Put some glad wap into the containers and makes easy to slip them out. Pour the mixture in after you have lined the dishes in case I am confusing anyone lol.

I will be making these over Xmas. The caramel fudge pictured is just over a $1 in the confectionary aisle at Coles.

Thanks Sandi. a good tip especially now strawberries are here, and a good price.

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I could not manage without white vinegar - so cheap at Aldi or in fact Coles or Woollies. for a little more. We have really black blacks and all our darks because of a cup in the last rinse, and use it for heaps of cleaning things.

Sandi (SA)

9 yrs ago

Yes Phyl,

It will also kill weeds. If you put straight vinegar into a spray bottle you can just aim it onto the weed and it will die. We had burnt patches of lawn the next morning after making volcanoes at Olivia's birthday party, and I don't mean small patches.

It cleans your windows and mirrors.

I also wipe the inside of my vegetable drawer in the fridge, as it kills any mould spores. The rest of the fridge I do with vanilla on the cloth.

I keep a small plastic bottle in the fridge, holes in the lid, with Bicarb Soda in to absorb any smells.

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