How to Freeze Your Fruit NOW So You Can Enjoy It Later
One of the best things about summer is the delightful fresh fruit. From fruit-infused water to summer pie recipes, there’s no shortage of ways to use this cornucopia of sweet produce. If you’re anything like us, though, you dread the day when fruit goes out of season, the weather gets cooler, and berries start to taste like flavorless plastic (no exaggeration). Do yourself a favor and freeze your bounty now so it’s still in the game come fall and winter. Below, check out the best tips we found from the folks over at Extra Crispy.
Here’s the secret to freezing fruit the right way: You pop it into your freezer two separate times. At first, cut up the fruit and then place it in a single layer onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Then let it freeze completely before taking it out, putting it all into a freezer-friendly bag, and putting it back in.
The part that differs between different kinds of fruit is the prep. Rinse all of your fruit before freezing, but some fruits — berries, for example — are too fragile to handle streams of water. For all berries besides strawberries, submerge them in water and then strain with a colander.
Other than that, it’s pretty simple. Keep blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries whole, but feel free to slice strawberries before freezing. Melons can be diced, cubed, or scooped out with a melon scooper. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, mangoes, and nectarines can be sliced or diced.
One sad thing, though: You can’t freeze watermelon. Due to its high water content, when you freeze it, it basically turns to ice. So that ONE fruit truly is only at its peak during the summertime months. Seasonality strikes again!
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