All through the summer, we love picking fresh berries - mulberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and my favorite black raspberries! From the garden, the backyard, a trip to the berry farm, or the farmer's market, nothing compares to ripe summer berries! Then we freeze the extras to enjoy that summer flavor all winter long! Freezing summer berries is quick and easy, and needs no fancy equipment to stock your freezer for the months to come!
- Summer Harvest - There's nothing better than a freezer full of summer fresh produce in the middle of the winter! Having ready-to-use berries in the freezer is easy, no matter how large or small your harvest, or how often you pick your berries! Sometimes I just pick a bowl each day from my backyard, and this process lets me just freeze a bit as I go. Unlike canning, freezing berries takes just a few minutes, not hours, and you can stock up on this versatile and useful kitchen staple!
- Preserve your Garden - Berries are an expensive food come winter time, and frozen berries from the summer always beat the low quality, out of season grocery store berries! Freezing summer berries is one of the best ways to preserve your summer picking efforts!
- If you Love Freezing your Garden Harvests, check out these 21 Ways to Use Garden Tomatoes without Canning and try How to Blanch and Freeze Garden Green Beans!
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Fresh-Picked Summer Berries
Homegrown is simply the best! Berries plants are perennials, meaning they grow back year after year. Plant some in the garden or work a few berry bushes into your yard! Keep an eye out in public parks or nature areas for wild berries too! Mulberry trees and black raspberries are all over our neighborhood, free for the taking!
- Fresh Picked Summer Berries - This freezing method will work for any type of berries or a mixture of different berries. Freeze berries when they are ripe and perfect for fresh eating to lock in that summer taste!
- Before you freeze them all, use your berries fresh! We love this Strawberry Blueberry Salad and always make Strawberry Shortcake! Make a batch of Blueberry Banana Oatmeal Muffins, a Mixed Berry Rhubarb Crisp, or this Strawberry Cucumber Salad!
- Other Fun Ways to Freeze Berries - Stock your freezer with these Strawberry Banana Yogurt Popsicles, Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce, Mulberry Ice Cream, and Mulberry Freezer Jam, to preserve your berry harvest!
How to Freeze Fresh Berries
Freezing berries is easy and you can freeze any amount you have, no matter how big or small your berry harvest!
Step 1 - Wash your berries in a colander under cold running water. You may even want to wash them in a bowl of water, draining off and refilling a few times. Drain well!
Cut off the tops of strawberries and cut them in half or leave them whole. The tiny green mulberry stems are edible and don't need to be removed.
Step 2 - Lay the berries out on a sheet pan in a single layer. You can use parchment paper or just scrape them up with a metal spatula when they freeze.
Put the sheet pan in the freezer for about an hour (or more is fine). This is called flash freezing and keeps the berries from freezing in a big clump in their storage container.
Step 3 - When the berries are flash frozen, transfer them to glass jars, ziploc bags, or any freezer safe container and store in the freezer.
Step 4 - This can be an ongoing cycle. Picking fresh berries, washing and flash freezing, then transferring to containers.
You can add new fresh berries to the same sheet pan and have this going in and out of your freezer all berry season long!
Freeze for 8 to 12 months.
Tips for Freezing
- Best Containers for Freezing - You can really use any containers to freeze berries, but if you've been around here awhile, you know I love freezing in glass jars! They're plastic-free, smaller serving size, reusable, and often free! They don't need to be canning jars, any jars you've saved from store-bought items are fine! You will need room in a big freezer. Ziploc bags also work great, and as you can see from the pictures, I often re-use my ziploc bags from store-bought foods like tortillas or nuts, just once, for berries.
- Mix or Keep them Separate - Mixing together the kinds of berries you have is totally fine, or keep them separate if you like!
- Don't Thaw Frozen Berries - Thawing frozen berries is going to release a ton of juice and be pretty mushy! It's best just to use them straight from frozen.
Top Tip
The Freezing Cycle - Freezing summer berries doesn't need to be a big one day event. I freeze as I go all summer long! I usually have a sheet pan sitting in the freezer, with the frozen berries I need to pack into jars, and awaiting the fresh berries I picked that day. Often I'll pick a bowl and leave it in the fridge for fresh eating. Then the next day I'll pick a new bowl, set it in the fridge, and wash and toss yesterdays berries on the sheet pan in the freezer. This takes a couple minutes and by the end of the summer I have preserved a lot of berries for the winter!
Ways to Use Frozen Berries
Stock your freezer with summer berries and you won't have to buy them in the winter when they're more expensive! We reach for our frozen summer berries to add delicious flavor and nutrition to lots of meals!
- Smoothies - Add your frozen berries along with my Smoothie Bucket method, and never waste any fresh fruit!
- Oatmeal, Yogurt, and Cereal - Frozen berries are just as good as fresh to top your breakfast bowls! They melt right into my Crockpot Steel Cut Oatmeal topped with Homemade Brown Sugar! We add them frozen right to a bowl of yogurt or plain cereal like Cheerios, topped with a scoop of Homemade Almond Granola.
- Desserts - Frozen berries work great in this Blueberry Pear Crisp or Mixed Berry Rhubarb Crisp!
- Muffins - Frozen berries can be added to muffin batter without thawing, like these Blueberry Banana Oatmeal Muffins!
- Pancakes - Add frozen berries as you ladle our favorite Easy Protein Pancakes onto the hot griddle!
Recipe FAQs
Frozen berries are good for about 8 to 12 months, but we usually finish ours before berry picking starts in the spring.
Yes, rinsing removes dirt and pests, but make sure to rinse gently with the more fragile berries. Really let them drain well in a colander to remove excess water before freezing.
You can, but they might stick together in a big clump in the storage container. Flash freezing on a tray takes an extra hour and makes it easy to grab just what you need—worth it for smoothies!
More Ways to Preserve your Garden!
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How to Freeze Summer Berries
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Print Pin RateEquipment
- sheet pan
- glass jars, freezer bags, or other storage containers
Ingredients
- 4 cups any kind of fresh berries (ANY amount)
Instructions
- Wash your berries in a strainer under running cold water and drain well.
- Remove the tops of strawberries. Tiny green mulberry stems are edible and don't need to be removed. Different kinds of berries can be mixed or kept separate.
- Lay any amount of berries on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and freeze for 1 hour or more.
- Transfer berries to glass jars, freezer bags or any containers. Freeze for 8 to 12 months.
Notes
- The Freezing Cycle - Freezing summer berries doesn't need to be a big one day event. Freeze as you go, any amount of berries you have, all summer long! I usually have a sheet pan sitting in the freezer, with the frozen berries I need to pack into jars, and awaiting the fresh berries I picked that day. Often I'll pick a bowl and leave it in the fridge for fresh eating. Then the next day I'll pick a new bowl, set it in the fridge, and wash and toss yesterdays berries on the sheet pan in the freezer. This takes a couple minutes and by the end of the summer I have a lot of berries for the winter!
- Drain - Really let berries drain well in a colander to remove excess water before freezing.
- Parchment Paper - You can use parchment paper when flash freezing the berries on the sheet pan, but you don't have to. If you don't, you may need to scrape the berries up with a metal spatula.
- Don't Thaw Frozen Berries - Thawing frozen berries will release a ton of juice and be mushy! It's best just to use them straight from frozen on oatmeal, yogurt, ice cream, cereal, in smoothies, pancakes, muffins, cobblers or crisps!
- Nutrition Information is for ½ cup of mixed berries.
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