IZAAK WALTON famously said, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did,” referring to the strawberry. One of my earliest memories is the jingle of the Good Humor truck coming up my street, selling vanilla ice cream with frozen strawberry syrup intermingled in it for a nickel a cup. I don’t think you need any convincing that strawberries are as heavenly a fruit as there is. Just make sure they’re organic.

Perhaps no berry is more delicious than the strawberry, but neither is there a berry more loaded with agricultural chemicals when grown conventionally. Pickers who have to enter the poison-drenched fields call strawberries “the devil’s fruit,” not just because of the backbreaking labor it takes to harvest them, but also because of the toxic environment of the fields. Millions of pounds of agricultural chemicals have been used on strawberries in recent years in California alone. In a study of 42 fruits and vegetables by the Environmental Working Group, strawberries were found to have the highest concentration of chemical contaminants.

And yet no berry is more beloved by children, who are most susceptible to bodily harm due to these chemicals. That’s perhaps the chief reason to seek out organic strawberries—but there are others. Strawberries are delicate things—quick to lose their evanescent esters and other fragrance and flavor compounds, soft and easily crushed in transit, and prone to rapid molding. And so the big, conventional, commercial growers use varieties such as Tioga in California, Surecrop through much of the country, and Blomidon in the northern states and Canada. What these varieties lack in quality they make up in firmness and shipping ability. But how unfortunate are those folks who’ve only tasted these tough, flavor-challenged commercial varieties.

Something of the wild strawberry’s luxurious flavor persists in our cultivated varieties, because it’s one of the parents of our modern hybrids. Wild American strawberry plants were taken to France about 1600, and a century later, another wilding (Fragaria chiloensis) from the Chilean coast, was also transported to France. The two species crossed by accident around 1750 and the first modern strawberry hybrid (Fragaria 3 ananassa) appeared. Much work was subsequently done in England to bring about a wide range of cultivars. Eventually the hybrids returned to the Americas to become the basis of the strawberry industry here.

Certain varieties of berries produce a big crop in June and then are finished for the season. These June-bearers are usually better flavored than everbearing types, which produce a sprinkling of berries throughout the summer. Something about the intensity of the June sun brings up the sugars and flavors of strawberries, and also their nutritional quality. Commercial berries for shipping—even organic ones—must be picked before they’re fully ripe or they get too soft. This means that the best berries are going to be locally grown—the nearer your house the better—so that they can ripen fully on the plant. And they will be from June-bearing types. Then they’ll be soft, juicy, and dripping sugar, with a hint of pineapple in their flavor. These are the ones to buy by the flat for freezing.  ....read more