Dried strawberry hulls for strawberry tea
What began years ago as an idle thought — I should freeze these perfect strawberries so I can make jam all year long — has become a cherished summer ritual. This is true even though I no longer make as much jam as I used to. The preserved strawberries find their way into smoothies or onto hot cereal or pancakes in the winter; there’s a whole discussion board at Chowhound on interesting ways to use frozen strawberries.
Best of all, freezing strawberries means there’s little need to buy expensive, imported berries in a plastic clamshell come December — or September or October if you don’t live in a climate with a harvest of late-season fruit.
Below you’ll find tips for how to freeze strawberries and how to dehydrate strawberry hulls to make strawberry hull tea.
How to Freeze Strawberries
I start with two flats (twenty pounds) of the sweetest berries I can find at the farmers market. We have a stand-alone freezer so a project of this size makes sense. Obviously, you should adjust quantities to fit your situation. I divide my berries into three big batches and go through the following process for each batch:
1. Rinse the berries in cold water and pat them dry with clean kitchen towels or paper towels.
2. Hull the berries. I like to use a grapefruit spoon for this part. Make sure you remove the full calyx under the stem, not just the green bits on top. (Set the hulls aside if you plan to dehydrate them; see below.)
3. Slice the berries to the size you want them to be when you’re ready to use them.
4. Place the berries on rimmed baking sheets — the berries can touch each other, but don’t crowd them — and freeze for 4 to 24 hours. Freezing them in this way keeps them from forming a solid lump when you put them away for the duration. I use five baking sheets for batches this big.
5. Weigh out the quantities that you want (this year I did 1-pound bags and some 8-ounce bags) and transfer the berries to freezer bags or whatever you prefer to use. I use a FoodSaver; even after a year, the frozen berries come out looking like they did when I put them into the bags. The goal is to get as much air as possible out of whatever container you use. If you use plastic freezer bags, you can suck a lot of the air out with a straw or just by using your mouth against a small opening in the bag. Frankly, I hate the plastic involved in my FoodSaver method but I have yet to find anything better. I’m going to reuse the plastic that I have for as long as possible. I think reuse is better, at least, than single-use plastic clamshells for store-bought berries.
6. Use a Sharpie to write the date and the weight, plus anything else you want to remember, on the bags before you put them in the freezer.
7. Use your berries within a year if possible. (If you want to make jam with your frozen berries, you can find some tips in my post on making jam from frozen fruit.)
With big batches like this, you’ll find parts of the process will overlap. You’ll be rinsing and hulling the berries for Batch 2, say, while Batch 1 is flash freezing on the baking sheets. It takes me two and sometimes three days to complete the full process, depending on how ripe the berries are. Very ripe berries + very hot weather = fastest possible process.
How to Dehydrate Strawberry Hulls–And Why Bother
You can preserve more than just the berries. This year I dehydrated the hulls, too, as shown in the first photo above. Used as a tea, dried strawberry hulls are said to be a good digestive aid. I’m going to try it and see. A friend also suggested that they’d do well in a homemade potpourri. They do smell good.
To dehydrate the hulls, I used my old-school American Harvest dehydrator that I found at Goodwill years ago. (The updated version, which is much fancier than the version I have, looks like this.) I think the oven would also work. Whatever method you use, keep in mind you’re going for tea and not fruit leather so don’t be shy about getting all the moisture out.) I think I gave them about 6 hours in my dehydrator.
Please note: It’s not safe to eat the stems or leaves of strawberries when they’re green, but thoroughly drying them makes them safe for tea. That said, you’ll also want to use only organic berries for this so you’re not steeping pesticides. And, as with anything you put in your mouth, use your judgment. Try a little and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, think sachets.
My next task: blackberry picking! I’ll try to pick and freeze 15-20 pounds this week using a similar process.
