Don't be too quick to knock them! (Strawberries)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Strawberries
Date:	08/06/09 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable tasting, a cheap way to help you eat a variety of fruit, excellent in smoothies

Disadvantages: Some strawberries are hard or bitter, no consistency within either the punnets or batches

Now, if I'd written this review a couple of weeks ago I would have said how wonderful these strawberries were as the very first punnet I bought were of excellent quality and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Unfortunately this has been proved to be a lucky fluke as I have since bought four punnets and discovered that the quality of the fruit varies widely from purchase to purchase, and I have never since had such a good selection of strawberries as the first lot.

These are certainly the cheapest way of buying edible strawberries, they're not the best quality that you're likely to encounter and some of them are rather hard BUT they only cost between £1 and £1.50 whereas a punnet of 'normal' strawberries can cost anything up to £3.99 so the savings to be had really are excellent.

Personally I buy them to make smoothies with, I must admit I adore strawberries too much to compromise on taste when it comes to a nice fruity munch. The taste and texture are perfect for smoothies though, when chopped into bits and sent around the blender there really is no difference between these and their vastly more expensive counterparts.

Also chopped into pieces and stirred into yogurt the strawberries are fine although I doubt they are flavoursome enough to be successfully pureed and they are nowhere near pleasant enough to eat alone. Some are a little bitter but, and gosh I am going to sound terribly snobbish here, for people who are on a very low income and simply CANNOT AFFORD the scandalous price of fruit these days this is healthy and nutritious fruit to help towards your five a day. There are strawberries in the punnets which are full of sweet juicy flavour and then there are duds, the punnets are just not consistent and that's why they are part of the Basics range and not the premium priced (and perfectly formed) strawberries on the next shelf up.

I shall continue to buy them as they do have their uses and it saves me using my best strawberries for things like smoothies, these strawberries perform well especially when blended as part of a mixture of red fruits and plain yogurt which luckily is one of my favourite smoothies. I drink smoothies daily and like the fact that these cheap strawberries cut my shopping bill down so drastically and I can still put half a punnet into one drink without feeling too frivolous! In fact I encourage you to use the strawberries as quickly as possible as they quickly go mouldy, I'd say use them within a day or two because once one fruit develops a wrinkle you'll find the whole entire punnet will go bad within hours.

They do apparently keep better in the fridge, although I cannot comment on this as I hate cold strawberries and never put them in the fridge - much preferring to use them all up quickly before they start to go off!

I say that for the price they are fine, there's nothing inherently bad about these strawberries so please don't allow your prejudices to get in the way but by the same token they are not as good as my treble priced strawberries that I will continue to buy for daily munching.

Summary: A punnet of strawberries for £1 is not to be sniffed at!