Do Strawberries Last Longer in Glass

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Just call me Scientist Mom.

Lately, I have seen a post floating around Facebook claiming that strawberries can last weeks in glass jars in the fridge. I decided to put this to the test for the benefit of both myself, my wallet, and you dear reader! You can either use this as a way to change the way you look at food storage, or you could even use this as a science experiment to do with your own kids!

Like a good scientist, I wanted to test with a few different variables and have a control group in order to see the results best. So I went to the store and spent a small fortune on strawberries so that I had plenty to compare to each other.

The first thing I did was get two of each container that I wanted to test, one will contain strawberries that I simply washed with water, the other will contain strawberries that I let sit in Apple Cider Vinegar for about 10 mins before placing it into the jar. Plus I have two control groups that stayed in the container that you buy them at the store in.

As you can see I am testing two small air-tight plastic containers, two mason jars, and two jars with a seal from the food storage aisle.

Day 1

We did try to have around the same number of strawberries in each container, but the mason jars do have a difference because we ran out of strawberries, so I will name that note in case there is a difference I see that you might not see if you are trying this in your own home!

Three Weeks Later

I will tell you I had every intention of documenting this at week one, and week two….however #momlife happened, and these poor experimental strawberries got neglected in our spare fridge.

So I can say without a doubt if you see claims of a glass jar making your strawberries last in the refrigerator indefinitely they are not telling the truth! But I will say that based on our three-week results, there IS a difference when you store them in Glass versus the plastic containers you get from the store.

These are the Control Group strawberries:

On the left is no vinegar bath and on the right is with a 10-minute vinegar bath. As you can see those while neither of them is edible at 3 weeks, the ones without vinegar were starting to mold.

Now to compare our containers with the control group…..

strawberries

These are the ones stored in small plastic containers. Those without a vinegar bath….yikes! Mold city! The ones with a vinegar bath were a little pink in color and mushy but no mold and still very juicy!

strawberries

These are the ones stored in a small glass jar, and again the ones without a vinegar bath were moldy. But those with a vinegar bath were a lot like the ones before a little pinker and mushy, but no mold and juicy.

strawberries

The last and most successful group was those stored in the Large Glass Mason Jars. As you can see the ones without vinegar actually look really good, after THREE WEEKS of being in my refrigerator!! They were a little mushy but almost something I would have chopped and eaten. The ones with a vinegar bath looked just like the others, pink and mushy.

So my conclusion is that if you want to extend your strawberries for more than a few days you need to try putting them in large glass mason jars, and a vinegar bath is not really necessary with this method.

I also have concluded that if you see a post claiming to extend the life of your strawberries for more than a couple of weeks at the most they are exaggerating because at three weeks these had defiantly reached the end of their ability to be eaten by anything other than a composting pile.

 

Was this helpful information? Will you change the way you store your strawberries from now on? Would you like me to test any other Life Hacks for you?

strawberries

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Jennifer
Jennifer is a Coastal Bend Native, born and raised in Ingleside. She began contributing to the Corpus Christi Moms Blog in 2018 and stepped up as the Community Engagement Coordinator in 2019. She is happiest when she is crafting, writing, or doing anything artistic. She loves music, especially ANYTHING from the 90's, and is often seen dancing around the kitchen to Nsync while cooking dinner. She is married to Derik and has two kids, Connor and Keeley (pronounced Key-Lee). Jennifer still feels like a novice when it comes to parenting and enjoys letting other moms know they are not doing life alone. She also admits she watches copious amounts of Netflix, but balances that out by reading to and with her kiddos as much as possible each day.