Freeze, store & preserve raspberries

Freezing or boiling raspberries are two ways to enjoy raspberries from your own garden in autumn or winter.

Who his Raspberries (Rubus idaeus) has lovingly cared for all year round and is able to harvest abundantly, of course he would like to eat the sweet fruits not only in summer. We'll tell you how you can keep your raspberries for the rest of the year. As always, there are advantages and disadvantages, depending on the method. Below we give you brief instructions for each method.

Store raspberries in the refrigerator

Unprocessed, raspberries can hardly be stored for more than a day. If you need your sweet fruit for a cake the next day or the day after that, the delicate berries will hold up for a while two days in the refrigerator, but this is not the ideal way to store the raspberries, which quickly become mushy and moldy in the refrigerator kick off. Incidentally, the raspberries tolerate storage in the refrigerator best if they are not on top of each other, but next to each other, for example on a plate or a flat sieve.

Freeze raspberries

Raspberries are great for freezing. Everyone knows the big bags or boxes from the deep-freeze department that are filled to the brim with the sweet fruits. Before freezing, however, you should wash and presort your raspberries. Remove all fruits that show signs of eating or mold. After washing and sorting, the raspberries should drain thoroughly and dabbed with a kitchen towel so that unnecessary ice crystals do not form when they freeze. Depending on what the raspberries thawed again at a later point in time will be used for, there are now two options:

1. If it doesn't matter if the raspberries freeze together into a small lump, just put them in an airtight freezer box or bag and put them in the freezer. This method is easier and is completely sufficient, for example, for raspberry sauces, purees, smoothies or shakes.

Tip: Use freezer containers rather than bags. The raspberries are very sensitive to pressure and can be damaged in the bag before they freeze.

1. Sometimes frozen raspberries should be easy to portion, for example because they can be used as a topping for a cake or to enrich a punch, Bacardi Razz or other cocktails. Occasionally you want to avoid giving off too much water when baking with frozen raspberries. In these or similar cases, the first-described option of freezing is not well suited. Rather, it is advisable to place the berries next to each other on a plate or bowl lined with cling film and to put them in the freezer. After a few hours, take the plate out of the freezer and quickly place the already frozen berries in a lockable freezer box, allows the air to escape from the container and quickly puts the box back into the Freezer. When the berries are taken out of the freezer again in the next few months, they are easy to portion and give off relatively little water.

Our tip: Freezing raspberries or processed raspberry products such as puree is a very gentle way of preserving food, which retains many vitamins compared to canning. Of course, these can also be lost in the subsequent processing (for example in the oven when baking cakes or when heating the raspberries to make a sauce). However, freshly frozen raspberries are slowly thawed in the refrigerator and then raw, for example for one Smoothie, used for a muesli or a milkshake, the raspberries still have a high level of health Value.

Freezing raspberries: raspberry ice cream or puree

If you like raspberries as ice cream, as a sauce or puree, for example with yogurt, a quark dish, a Mousse or a pudding can be eaten instead of the raw raspberries freeze. Creamy raspberry ice cream made from whipped cream, egg yolk, vanilla sugar and lightly pureed raspberries can also be made without an ice cream machine. Once frozen, the cream only needs to be stirred every few hours to prevent the yolks from settling. After stirring two or three times, you will notice that the desired consistency has been achieved. The ice can then be kept for several months. Popsicle ice cream can also be made from pureed raspberries or from yogurt mixed with raspberries. Raspberry puree or sauce can be put in a freezer and defrosted again for desserts or heated slightly. If you only need small amounts, you can freeze the puree or sauce in an ice cube mold and, as soon as they are frozen, put the cubes in a container or a plastic bag. These cubes are easier to portion later.

Reduce the raspberries

Like almost every sweet fruit, the raspberry can also be boiled down well. Before boiling, however, the following applies here too: wash well and sort. Sprinkle the raspberries with plenty of sugar and let it sit for one to two hours. Then you can distribute your now even sweeter raspberries on mason jars. But be careful: Only fill the jars up to two thirds full so that there is still enough space to expand during the boiling process.
You can use pure sugar water to fill the glasses or refine the whole thing with a little raspberry syrup. As soon as you have portioned all the fruits and all the vessels are filled with the preserving stock, close the jars tightly and cook them for an hour.

Our tip: Of course, you can also use raspberries to make jelly or jam. The process is similar. In this case, the fruits are also mashed and gelling sugar is used instead of normal sugar. If necessary, unwanted raspberry pits can also be removed before boiling by straining the raspberries through a sieve.

Dry raspberries

Dried and parched fruits (and vegetables) are becoming increasingly popular. Quite a few hobby gardeners and nutrition-conscious people have discovered this type of preservation for themselves and bought a dehydrator for this purpose.
Unfortunately, drying is not a suitable way of preserving the raspberry. With a water content of around 80%, the raspberry is a very juicy fruit that only leaves the peel and seeds at the end of the drying process. So-called freeze-dried raspberries, which are sometimes found in muesli, for example, are produced using a technically complex process that is unfortunately difficult to imitate at home.

As you can see, there are innumerable ways to preserve the delicious fruits for the time after the raspberry season. With the wide range of dishes that you can eat with frozen or cooked raspberries - in addition to delicious raspberry jam - you will certainly never get an appetite for the aromatic berries pass away.