How to Macerate Strawberries, Even Better in Rose Wine

It’s full-on June, the season of rosé and strawberries. It just so happens that they are wonderful together, so here’s a recipe for fresh strawberries macerated in rosé.

{If you love this wine as much as I do, check out my wine writing and podcasting friend Katherine Cole’s new book devoted to it, called Rosé All Day. Sounds good to me!}

Today, the girls picked up a flat of very ripe strawberries at the farmers market. If have a chance to go berry picking with your kids, I hope you take it. There is nothing better!

First, I have a quick memory postcard from eight years ago when we picked strawberries in a friend’s garden. It is still so fresh in my mind, I can taste them!

Here’s wishing you a summertime of messing in the dirt with your kids and finding good things to eat there!~Lynne

Strawberry Bliss

Picking fresh berries is not something we mountain dwellers get to do very often. In a typical summer, we have to wait all the way through July’s heat for the mountain huckleberries and roadside blackberries to come on.

This past solstice weekend, thanks to Karen, we got to harvest strawberries grown practically on the banks of the Grande Ronde river. Five kids under five, two dogs, and their attendant adults worked up and down the rows sodden from weeks of rain.

When it was all over, our lips were stained and our odds-and-ends collection of buckets and bags were filled to capacity.

I’m longing for all those we left at peace in the field.

With a mammoth bowlful left out for snacking at all hours of the day, we made ice cream and freezer jam and froze some whole for next winter’s smoothies.

Is there anything better than having all the berries you dare to eat?

When the day turned rainy, we hardly noticed. We were already eating bowlfuls of homemade ice cream doused from the troth of macerated strawberries I’d made.

Macerated Strawberries?

Macerate is a word for people who love knowing the technical terms for simple phenomena. It’s a simple process of soaking foods in in a liquid until they soften.

The method I most often use is to stir a judicious amount of granulated sugar into a bowl of fresh washed, hulled and sliced strawberries. I don’t like it too sweet, so I start with about 1 tablespoon of sugar per pint of berries and add more to taste.

The sugar causes the berries to juice and after about 15 minutes at room temperature they have produced their own syrup. Strawberry magic! {Same trick works for raspberries and sour cherries.}

Master this method and you’ll have the topping for strawberry shortcake, pound cake, ice cream sundaes and yogurt anytime you want. Well, when the strawberries are ripe, that is.

Embellish as you like with honey, wine, liqueur, balsamic vinegar, orange flower water, vanilla extract, elderberry syrup… I think you have the idea.

I’m wondering which one you’ll try first. Here’s one of my absolute favorites for the adults.

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