Have you ever struggled to keep your strawberries fresh for long? Strawberry is soft and juicy fruit, which requires more care to keep it fresh. You won’t believe that you don’t need any fancy products to keep this summer fruit fresh for days!
It is really challenging to keep this delicate fruit fresh for longer. The strawberries often expire way before we need them. While you bought it and tossed it in the refrigerator and are just getting ready to eat them, you see they have turned moldy. The refrigerator itself did not sustain the juicy strawberries. So, one must always think of how to increase the shelf life of the strawberries that are yummy and juicy?
How to increase the shelf life of the strawberries?
You can use a simple household ingredient to increase the shelf life of the strawberries. Vinegar, as we all know, has an ever-increasing and extensive collection of household applications. Therefore, it can be used to wash the product. It is non-toxic, like other cleaners.
Vinegar was used extensively in the kitchen in old times. It is a safety agent in the kitchen. Vinegar helps increase the shelf life of many other products and eatables in the kitchen. When people did not have a refrigerator, they used to pickle the vegetables and put vinegar in most of the eatables to maintain their shelf life.
How can vinegar help increase the shelf life of strawberries?
Editors at Cook’s Illustrated talks about the efficacy of vinegar in cleaning fruit before eating it. All we have to do is mix one part vinegar and three parts water and submerging the fruit in the solution. It helps remove 98 percent of germs, which makes the fruit considerably cleaner than it was when rinsed with a bar of antibacterial soap or using water.
That means you might not really need those expensive produce washes at all to rinse the fruit and reduce its shelf life. Follow the method of immersing strawberries in one part vinegar and three parts of water, and you can defeat the maturity of mold. But be careful this trick does not kill the mold, so ensure to do it before they begin to get fuzzy or as soon as you buy them.
A rinse with the plain water afterward will make sure that unwanted tastes are lingering on the fruit. Before storing them make sure that the strawberries are as dry as possible. Pat dry with paper towels, or you may also line a salad spinner with paper towels and twist until they’re dry, then pack them off in a clean container lined with additional paper towels to eliminate any residual moisture.
For bigger fruits, you can set the same mix in a spray bottle to clean them.
Why is it essential to wash off the fruits before consuming?
Well, for starters, that fruit can contain many unwanted bugs and dirt as it passes many hands. So have a look at the list to understand why you should wash off the product before consuming it.
- Fruit must have passed through many hands, which makes it riskier.
- It can carry dangerous bacteria.
- You might eat bugs.
- It also helps remove pesticides and herbicides.
- Washing removes dirt and debris.
Wash them thoroughly before consumption and try homemade vinegar cleaning spray to wash off the fruits and increase the shelf life of the strawberries. With the above tips and tricks, you can now keep your strawberries fresh for a longer time.
