What Happens To Berries When You Clean Them With Vinegar?

Vinegar is a pantry staple with sharp flavoring as much as it is a cleaning agent to keep your kitchen pristine. And when you clean your berries with it, it can extend their freshness, allowing you to enjoy them for a longer time. More specifically, vinegar eliminates the mold on the berries, as well as bacteria, which cause them to go bad quickly, no matter how properly you store them. 

Some folks would discourage cleaning berries with vinegar, as they can act like a sponge, which leads them to become less robust in flavor due to extra moisture and even rot faster. However, the key is to dry the berries after cleaning them in a 3-part white vinegar and 1-part water solution — and they won't even absorb the vinegar flavor. So, before storing your berries, you can (and should) give them a vinegar wash by letting them stay there for 5 to 10 minutes. This can also wash off leftover pesticides, which are not only potentially harmful to one's health but can also cancel out the benefits you may get from produce. Vinegar might just be your best bet for consuming berries with peace of mind, but it's not the only kitchen staple that you can enlist the help of.

Another all-around kitchen staple that's commonly used for cleaning is baking soda. You can easily whip up your own solution by mixing 1 tablespoon of it for every 1 gallon of water. But keep in mind that a short exposure to the solution is best for the berries. Fruits, like stoneware, can crack from thermal shock, which happens when you introduce them to water that's above or below their current temperature. As such, the produce can reabsorb everything you want to get rid of, making all your efforts to clean it futile. The thing with using baking soda, however, is that it doesn't really eliminate bacteria, but it does rinse away buildup on the surface.

The FDA mentions that washing produce under running water is quite effective and should be enough to get rid of what you're worried about. Just give it a light scrubbing while you're at it. It's also best to steer clear of cleaning agents you can buy from the nearest grocery store, as fruits and vegetables will also soak them up — even if they're marketed as produce wash. Ingesting them afterward can make you ill. Stick to water or use natural ingredients that you can consume either way. While water seems to do the trick, it's only natural that we want to ensure what we put in our bodies is clean. So, for added peace of mind, you can definitely make do with a little help from vinegar or baking soda.