This is one of my favorite desserts in summer time. Only three ingredients, easy to make, and delicious. As with many of my recipes, it helps to use the best strawberries you can find (ripe and fragrant), nice honey and the best aged artisan balsamic vinegar you can afford. The best to use for this is the real stuff: aceto balsamico tradizionale aged for 12 or even 25 years. That stuff is very expensive, but also very good. If you live in the Netherlands, the 12-year old balsamic from De Librije is almost as good for about 1/6 of the price of the real stuff.
You can think of maceration as the the reverse of marinating. Instead of putting the strawberries in a liquid, we are drawing out the strawberry juice by mixing them with honey and balsamic. You can also do this with regular sugar, but it is much better with honey and balsamic. You will be amazed how great the strawberries will taste! If they are not as ripe as you’d like, just add a bit more honey than usual.
Don’t forget to drink the juice after you finish eating the strawberries, because that is perhaps the best part!
Ingredients
For 4 servings
500 grams (1 pound) strawberries
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
Preparation
Wash, dry and hull (remove the green bit) the strawberries. Cut them into halves or quarters, or leave them whole. Add honey and balsamic and stir to mix.
Let this stand at room temperature for about an hour, stirring after about halfway and at the end. Serve with the juices.
Wine pairing
As with many fruit desserts, this is outstanding with Moscato d’Asti. Since it’s red fruit, it’s also good with Brachetto d’Aqui, which is the red version of Moscato d’Asti.
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 
Hi Stefan, we are having a BBQ this afternoon. You have solved my desert problems.
Best,
Conor
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Hi Conor,
Great to hear! I make this often for BBQ’s.
Hope your weather is as good as ours.
Enjoy!
Stefan
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20 degrees+ Not a cloud in the sky.
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What a perfect summer dessert. Usually we just drink whatever we have around, but this time I am going to try your wine paring as well!
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Great! Would love to hear how it turns out!
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Great simple recipe- and we do have strawberries. Thanks.
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Hey Stefan,
Just found your blog. I am going to make this tasty treat today. I have some lovely aged balsamic. Keep up the yummy cooking.
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Thanks. Your comment was automatically marked as spam. Do you know why that is? It is likely that you are comments at other blogs are being blocked, too.
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I think it is but I am not sure why…..
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Also this one was again marked as spam. I have now unspammed you twice, maybe that helps…
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Ugh….
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As usual, your recipes, ingredients, and outcome are all lovely! Thanks for reminding me of this simple, yet stunning dessert. It’s strawberry season, so another great use of one of my favorite berries.
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What a great use of your aged balsamic vinegar and the gorgeous, thick honey.
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