Frozen Strawberry Preserves
This is a great way to freeze strawberries for use year round.
Ingredients
For Storing
- 8 cups diced, fresh strawberries
- ½-¾ cup white sugar
For Sauce from Stored berries
- 8 cups frozen, preserved berries
- 2 tbsp strawberry Jell-O
- 2 tbsp corn starch dissolved in ¼ cup water
- water
Instructions
Preserving the Strawberries
- Wash, de-stem, and dice the strawberries
- Put the strawberries in a large bowl
- Sprinkle the strawberries with sugar. Start with ½ cup. Mix well and let the berries sit
- The sugar acts as the preservative, so it's important to have enough to keep the berries from losing their flavor and coloring. If you added enough sugar, the berries should release a lot of juice and turn a deep shade of red. If that doesn't happen after 5 minutes or so, add more sugar. You can try tasting the juice from the berries, and if it's moderately sweet, then that should be enough sugar.
- Once the berries have changed color, dump all the berries and the juice into a freezer-safe container.
- Add a date and freeze!
Strawberry Sauce
- Thaw strawberries in strainer over bowl to reserve juice
- Once strawberries are thawed, measure out juice. You will need 1½ cups juice. If you don’t have enough juice, add water to juice to make a combined mixture equaling 1½ cups liquid.
- In a medium saucepan, whisk together Jell-O and strawberry liquid until combined.
- Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook the strawberry mixture until it comes to a boil, about 2 minutes.
- Once it's boiling, whisk in the corn starch and water mixture. Bring back to a boil.
- Once it's boiling, stir in strawberries and bring it back up to a boil. Then take off heat.
- Serve right away or let sit if you want it cooler.