Strawberry Crush (Strawberry Concentrate)

I wrote about the huge load of strawberries we got from strawberry picking in this post. After making those pancakes and the syrup, I still had a lot of them leftover. So I asked my blog buddies on whatsapp on how to use them up before they go bad.

Ever resourceful Vaishali gave her Strawberry crush recipe. She said it's her tried and tested recipe and I immediately set about to make the crush. Vaishali uses the crush in many different ways: as a sauce to serve chocolate desserts, to make popsicles and so on. Head over to Vaishali's blog for many more yummy ideas to use with strawberry crush.

This crush needs a little bit of pre-planning because the berries need to macerate overnight in sugar. The soft berries are then pureed and mixed with sugar syrup to make the crush. You can add a preservative to make it more shelf stable. I didn't have any preservative, so I kept mine in the fridge. It will last for up to a month in the fridge.

Ingredients:

Strawberries - 550gms
Sugar - 1½cup
Citric Acid - ½tsp
Water - 2cup

Method:

• Wash and clean the berries.
• In a large bowl, mix strawberries with sugar and set aside overnight. 
• Next day take the strawberries out of the liquid and blend them to a puree.
• Add water to the liquid sugar and boil for 15 minutes. Cool the mixture.
• Once cool, mix the sugar mixture with the strawberry puree. 
• Pour into clean jars and store in the refrigerator.

When ready to serve, dilute 1 part strawberry concentrate with 3~4parts of chilled water or soda.

Notes:

• Add few drops of food color to the crush, if the color looks too pale. I didn't have to add any color.
• Preservative like sodium benzoate can be added to the crush to make it shelf stable.

Linking this to Valli's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge: August -- Week 1'.