Easy Strawberry Sauce

I’ve been meaning to add this recipe for Easy Strawberry Sauce to the site for a while now. I say that all the time, don’t I? Well, it’s true! There are so many requests, it’s like Mount Everest!!

This recipe is probably the simplest and easiest I’ve got coming for you. It only takes a handful of ingredients, comes together in minutes, and is good on so, so many things. Before we get into the recipe, tho, let me dump some photos from my most recent strawberry picking trip!

Easy Strawberry Sauce Ingredients

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Easy Strawberry Sauce recipe:

• Strawberries: Fresh ones. A whole pound! Check out the section below titled ‘How to Clean your Strawberries‘ for tips on cleaning them. How you cut them is up to you: sometimes I will dice them, sometimes I only cut them in half. Play with it and see what you like best.
• Granulated sugar: Raw sugar would work fine. How much you need will depend on your tastes and how sweet your berries are. Outside of NC berry season, I increase the amount to about 1/2 cup.
• Salted butter: This can be omitted if you want to keep things vegan (make sure your sugar is organic if so), but it adds a silkiness to the sauce that can’t be replaced. Well, it probably can, but I haven’t tried. I like my butter. Maybe vegan butter?
• Lemon juice: Just a bit to bring freshness to the sauce, and balance out the sugar.
• Vanilla extract, ground ginger: These add a warm brightness to the sauce you’ll miss without it.
• Equipment: You don’t need much! Just a sharp knife, a cutting board, a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, and a silicone spatula or wooden spoon for stirring. Here’s what I used:

How to Clean your Strawberries

Last year when TikTok had the world in a tizzy because folks found bugs coming out of their berries I covered how I clean mine, and also how I thought the uproar was a bit nonsensical. This is because I’m country. Here’s that portion of my Strawberries + Cream Oatmeal Bars post:

Growing up the way I did – very familiar with where food comes from – desensitized me to things like this. Think cornfields, turkey farms, and peach groves. Raising chickens from hatchlings until they were big enough to butcher and turn into supper (I never ate them, it felt like cannibalism). I used to drink honeysuckle nectar straight from the flowers on the bush while waiting for the school bus to arrive.

I don’t want to eat bugs of course, but finding a worm in an apple is pretty low on my list of concerns. I just wash everything well and carry on about my day.

Fruit & Veggie Wash

Here’s how to make a fruit and vegetable wash that’s sold at many local fruit stands around here:

1. Fill your (cleaned and sanitized) sink with cool water. My sink holds 25 gallons, but I don’t fill it up all the way – just about 3/4 of the way.
2. Add 1 C of distilled white vinegar and 2 tbsp of kosher salt.
3. Soak your produce for about 5 minutes – longer if we’re talking something fibrous like broccoli or lettuce.
4. Rinse thoroughly with cold water.
5. Cut any bruised or damaged pieces off of the produce.
6. Pat the fruits and or veggies dry with paper towels if not using right away.

I don’t recommend doing this more than a day or two before you want to use them: in my experience produce spoils much quicker after washing. You can also combine everything to a spray bottle (4 : 1 water to vinegar, eyeball the salt) and keep that in the fridge to clean things as needed.

How to Make Easy Strawberry Sauce

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Easy Strawberry Sauce recipe:

• Prep your strawberries. Decide how you’re cutting them up. You can see how the sauce looks when I dice the berries in the photo of Pancakes below. I sliced them lengthwise where you see the Strawberry Shortcakes. The flavor will be the same no matter what, so it very much depends on the mouthfeel you’re going for.
• Add everything to the saucepan. Melt the butter over medium heat, then add the berries, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla. After that’s stirred together well, stir in the ground ginger if using.
• Simmer and reduce. Cover with a lid and simmer the berries for 5-7 minutes, until foam begins to form on top.
• Cool and serve. Transfer the Easy Strawberry Sauce to another container and allow it to cool to room temperature. Serve, or store in the fridge in an airtight container for up to a week.

What to Serve with this Easy Strawberry Sauce

There are endless variations that you can make with this Easy Strawberry Sauce recipe, so please feel free to customize yours to taste!  For example, you could…

• Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes: Just pile it on top, with extra fresh strawberries, too!
• Croissant French Toast: Same as above. Pile it on!
• How High? Buttermilk Biscuits: See the Strawberry Shortcake pictured above? That was this sauce, those biscuits, and a hefty portion of vanilla bean whipped cream!

I hope you’ll come back and let me know what you thought of this Easy Strawberry Sauce recipe when you make it. Here are the obligatory Pinterest graphics:

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