Freeze-dried strawberries

Freeze-dried strawberries are the gateway fruit. They are the variety most people try first, the one bakers reach for most often, and the easiest to love: bright red, crisp as a wafer and bursting with concentrated strawberry flavour.

What they are like

Open a pack and the first thing you notice is the smell, which is closer to strawberry jam than to a punnet of fresh fruit. The slices are very light and snap cleanly. On the tongue they start crisp, then dissolve, and the flavour is both sweeter and sharper than fresh because there is no water to dilute it.

You will usually find them in three forms:

• Slices, the most versatile. Good for snacking, cereal, decorating cakes and cocktails.
• Whole berries, impressive to look at and wonderfully crunchy, but slower to rehydrate.
• Pieces or crumble, small fragments that are ideal for folding into bakes, granola and chocolate.

There is also strawberry powder, which is the same fruit milled fine.

How to use freeze-dried strawberries

At breakfast

Scatter slices over porridge, overnight oats, yoghurt or cereal. If you stir them into hot porridge they soften within a minute or two and streak the oats pink.

In baking

This is where they shine. Because they add flavour without water, they solve problems fresh strawberries cause:

• Buttercream and icing: blitz to a powder and beat in. You get real fruit flavour and a natural pink colour, and the icing stays firm. Try our strawberry buttercream.
• Sponges and muffins: fold pieces through the batter at the last moment.
• Shortbread and cookies: press pieces into the dough before baking.
• White chocolate bark and truffles: the sharpness cuts through the sweetness beautifully.
• Meringues and macarons: a spoonful of powder colours and flavours the shells.

As a snack

Eat them straight from the pack. They are popular in lunchboxes and with walkers because they weigh almost nothing. For babies and young children, soften the pieces in a little water first; dry, crisp pieces can be a choking risk.

In drinks

Float a slice on a glass of fizz, muddle into lemonade, or crush with sugar to make a pink rim for cocktail glasses.

How to rehydrate them

Put the strawberries in a bowl, add just enough cool water to cover, and wait two to five minutes for slices, a little longer for whole berries. Drain, and use as you would soft fruit. The texture will be closer to thawed frozen strawberries than to fresh ones, so rehydrated fruit is best in compotes, sauces, trifles and smoothies.

As a rough guide, 10g of freeze-dried strawberries is equivalent to about 100g of fresh. The fresh to freeze-dried converter does the sums for other amounts and other fruit.

Nutrition: what is inside

Fresh strawberries are about 90 per cent water. Freeze-drying removes nearly all of it and leaves everything else behind, so the figures per 100g look dramatic. Remember that 100g of freeze-dried strawberries is a very large amount, roughly a kilogram of fresh fruit.

These are typical ranges from published composition data and product labels. They vary with the variety, the ripeness and the producer, so always go by the label on your pack. All the sugar in plain freeze-dried strawberries is the fruit's own; nothing is added.

How to choose a good pack

1. Read the ingredients. It should say strawberries and nothing else.
2. Look at the colour. Bright red is good. Dull brown suggests age, heat or light damage.
3. Check for powder at the bottom. A little is normal. A lot means the pack has been knocked about.
4. Check the origin and the best-before date.
5. Compare the price per 100g, not the pack price. Small sachets can cost twice as much per gram as larger bags.
6. Choose resealable packaging unless you plan to decant into an airtight jar.

How to store them

Keep the pack sealed, in a cool, dark, dry cupboard. After opening, squeeze out the air and reseal, or move the fruit to an airtight jar. Moisture is what ruins the crunch. Our storage guide goes into more detail.