Should Strawberries Be Refrigerated?

I just watched Annabel Langbein on SBS TV when she visited a strawberry farmer in Hawkes Bay in NZ, and whilst walking in the paddock, she said to him that strawberries are like tomatoes and should not be refrigerated, to which he agreed.

When I was working for the generating authority over 50 years ago, we would travel to the Atherton Tablelands for maintenance works and sometimes visit a small strawberry farm where I would buy delicious strawberries.

My wife and I rarely find any strawberries worth eating these days, let alone paying for, and all the supermarket stocks come from down South, and it has been refrigerated for weeks or months.

I suspect that this is what accounts for the difference in what I loved some 50 years ago and our disappointment these days.

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Also selective breeding. Some supermarket cultivars of fruit, including tomatoes, are bred for looks and durability and if that means lacking taste the growers will take the trade-off. Modern strawberries are huge compared to 50 years ago.

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Yes, this is principally why strawberries are different to decade ago. The characteristics which are selected include bigger ones, higher yields, disease resistance, long storage life and also reduced bruising through transport/handling.

Strawberries can be stored in the fridge and won’t lose their flavour like tomatoes. It is actually recommended to store them in the fridge (also see link below).

Like any fruits (wine, beer etc), consuming when they are cold less flavour is tasted in the mouth. Let them warm to room temperature before consuming, they will have a lot more flavour.

This website also has useful information:

and again, it is recommended to refrigerate immediately after picking to retain the sugars (and flavour) in the fruit.

So in answer to the question, it is a clear yes that they should be refrigerated on picking to maintain flavour and also for food safety reasons.

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The program showed the current NZ favourite variety and 2 new varieties which were all described as delicious.

Our supermarket offerings, large or small, could not be described as that.

Yesterday, I bought a punnet of strawberries at our local Supa IGA for $1.

Today, I bought a container of chocolate dipping sauce at Coles for $2 to try to ensure that they can be edible.

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Common advice is to only buy what is in season and produced locally. Our big supermarket chains tend to redistribute through centralised warehousing. Some fruit travels well in cold or cool storage. Some does not. There can be many many food miles required.

As the Glass House Mountains strawberry growers are at our front door, one might expect near perfect product. The good news is it’s fresh. The not so good news, is that the majority of the crop are varieties optimised for transport and storage. The more delicious and often less robust product is harder to find.

Most fruit is produced to meet durability and looks at the lowest possible cost. It’s notable the best tasting strawberries I’ve eaten were in Japan, and grown in California. Which says great product can be produced and travel many miles.

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It’s so easy to grow your own strawberries, and they actually have flavour! (And definitely need refrigeration or they grow a fluffy white mould quite quickly.)

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Exactly what happens at the end of the line in the packing sheds down the road from our house. They go into cool storage. The following commercial guide has a great section on packing, as well as commercial cultivation requirements.

Note strawberries may be field packed by the pickers or bulk collected and rehandled in a sorting/packing shed. In either instances the fresh picked fruit needs to be put into cool storage promptly to maintain the fruit quality.

P.S.
When serving best allowed to warm from the fridge for a fuller flavour.

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