How do you choose the tastiest strawberries?

We’d much rather squeeze and smell all the fruit and vegetables we buy. The right melon or mango smells deliciously sweet through the skin, but how do you recognize perfect strawberries?

We’ve regularly been fooled by large, juicy-looking strawberries that then turned out to taste rather watery. Or were very sour. Or both. Luckily, we now know the ultimate way to find juicy, flavorful strawberries.

Small but perfectly formed?

Look, that’s where we went wrong already. Don’t automatically go for the biggest ones. Small can be lovely too. It’s a misconception that bigger is always better, because sometimes those strawberries are simply watery. Although the Lambada strawberry is usually impressively large and simply deliciously sweet. Just like the small Dutch strawberry.

Season

The most important thing, whether you go for large or small, is the season. Dutch strawberries are at their tastiest from June to September, so buy them then. In the Netherlands, strawberries are basically available all year round thanks to greenhouse cultivation, but they’re not necessarily tastier.

Local

A strawberry that has had to travel for hours—or, what am I saying, days—to end up on the supermarket shelf is naturally less fresh than a strawberry from a local farmer. The fresher the strawberry, the fresher the taste. So go local. Which brings us back to the Dutch strawberry. It’s also better for your energy footprint.

Color

It may be stating the obvious, but green strawberries aren’t tasty because they’re unripe. So the redder the strawberry, the better. Yet Noma in Copenhagen and De Librije in Zwolle have now also discovered the green, unripe strawberry and are incorporating it into their culinary masterpieces. Who knows, perhaps this is just a matter of time.