Your Berries Should Warm up a Little.
A couple of evenings ago, I went with a few friends to pick berries on Sauvi Island. After trying several of the many varieties available, I settled on the hoods because the season is short and I’m only human. (After tasting the sweet-sweet pulp of the Hood strawberry, it’s hard to go back to the huge watery Driscoll’s.) After we got everyone around the apartment, my pickers and I enjoyed a bowl of freshly harvested berries, store-bought the pie with angel food and whipped cream from a canister. It was a great moment.
The next morning, I took a few berries out of my mouth, right out of the refrigerator. They didn’t taste the same. They were less sweet, more tart and pungent on the tongue. Have I eaten all the best the night before? (No.) Did the idyllic setting affect their taste? (In a way, yes, but that wasn’t the problem.)
Like cheese and some other foods , berries just taste better at room temperature. The warmer temperature helps your nose and mouth to perceive their aroma compounds, which means they taste and smell better. (By “aromatic” I mean “pleasant aroma” and not “containing carbon rings with alternating pi bonds,” although there is some overlap between the two.) Cold temperatures muffle tastes and smells, so I tried my berries after the morning. spicy and sour, not sweet and boiled.
This does not mean that you have to store berries at room temperature. Berries tend to go bad and mold pretty quickly, so store them in the refrigerator without rinsing until you’re ready to eat them, then wash and let them hang at room temperature for 15-30 minutes. The wait may seem endless, but the rewards – sweet and flavorful rewards – will be worth this quarter or half hour break. For example, I did not spend hours squatting in a drizzling field to eat hurried, chilled, tasteless berries.