Strawberry sauce with a balsamic kicker!

It’s that time of year again!

Well yes.  BBQs and swimmin’ and all that…  But I was thinking more of June’s dreamy-fresh strawberry picking season.

Yesterday we went to Butler’s Orchard in Germantown, Maryland to pick our own, sunshine-hot and bursting-sweet.  (one for me…one for the basket…five for me…one for the basket…)  It’s so easy to get carried away!

So we returned home with veritable oodles of berries and had to face the music.  You see…I sinned.  I washed them.  Did you know that you don’t do that until you are ready to eat them, or they will begin to wilt before your very eyes?  Oh.  Well I didn’t.

What to do with all of these fabulous little treasures before they begin to disintegrate?!  Strawberry sauce.  Gourmet strawberry sauce.  Oooohhh…Aaaahhh!

Adding balsamic vinegar to strawberries may sound foul but I assure you that the sweetness of the fruit and sugar make it quite fair.  The balsamic vinegar brings a depth to the flavor and enhances the color of the strawberries in the most lover-ly way.  And if you, like me, have a ton of strawberries set to expire you can afford to test me on this.

And in other great news: you need only 3 ingredients (strawberries, sugar, and balsamic vinegar):

1. Toss 4 cups of hulled strawberries into a large saucepan; add 3 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar.
2. Lightly crush the mixture with a potato masher and bring it to a boil.
3. Decrease the heat to simmer and reduce the mixture to your desired consistency.
4. Cool then refrigerate until ready to use.

Now what to do with this nectar?

• drizzle over vanilla ice cream
• dollop into yogurt or oatmeal
• spread on toast or scones
• sauce your pork or chicken
• spoon generously over pound cake, angel food cake, pancakes and waffles
• sweeten-up that smoothie

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to wipe up all this drool.

POST-SCRIPT:
Hey look!  After I published my post I bounced over to The Bitten Word – one of my fave food blogs – to see if they had something new and delicious I might make…and shabam! STRAWBERRY-RHUBARB COMPOTE! – with a nod to balsamic vinegar (thanks guys!  I feel so…so…relevant!).