How I freeze strawberries

I have seen several "how-to" blog posts around and thought I would share one of my own.  This past week my mom picked up 8lbs of strawberries for me for $1 a pound, a great deal here!  This is what I did with all those berries to keep them from going bad.


 The first think I did was dump them in a sink full of cold water to wash off all the dirt.  I just left them floating in the water.

Then I went through them while still in the sink and sorted out all the moldy berries.  You could probably cut off the mold and use the rest of the berry but that makes me a bit uncomfortable so I just throw out the "bad"ones.  You can also pull out the soft berries and use them to make jam or some other thing but I just cut them up along with the rest of them.

 Then I took the remaining good berries and cut them up.  First I cut off the green top...

and threw it into a bowl that I had handy for all the moldy berries and green tops.  This is much easier than making a trip to the trash can after cutting every berry and less messy than just having the trash can next to you. 

Then take the berries and slice them.

I cut up 8 cups of strawberries, then added 1 cup sugar.

Stirred it in well...

And packaged it up in small freezer bags in 2 cup portions.  Make sure to label your bags!  Once in the freezer everything starts to look the same and it can be hard to guess what it is and how long it's been in there.

Lay these bags out flat on the shelf of your freezer and when frozen stack up.  If you just stick the stack of bags in your freezer they stick together, not fun.

These bags of strawberries can be substituted in any recipe that calls for a bag of frozen strawberries.  A word of warning: these are somewhat mushy when thawed so don't expect to eat them plain!

I have never frozen them without the sugar, if any of you have let me know how it worked!  :-)

A BIG Thank you to my Mom for teaching me how to do this when I was growing up and for always showing me how to live frugally! 

And finally, here is the recipe:

Freezing Strawberries

8 cups strawberries

1 cup sugar

Wash all your berries and sort out the moldy ones.  Cut off the green tops.  Slice your berries.  Add sugar; stir.  Package up in 2 cup portions in freezer bags.  Freeze.  Good for 1 year.