Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

Sometime last year I found a recipe for making Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing through the canning process.  I thought it sounded amazing, but I was past the strawberry season.  This year I planned on picking enough to make sure I could make this.  So at 8 month pregnant I went to the strawberry field around here and picked enough to make the smaller batch which is called out on the site I went to.

From my Canning Board:
http://canninggranny.blogspot.com/2011/05/canning-strawberry-vinaigrette-salad.html

It was fairly straight forward with soaking the strawberries overnight and then boiling the juices with sugar.  Kind of similar to making jam if you have ever done that.  I altered the recipe so instead of all white vinegar, I used half white distilled vinegar and half balsamic vinegar.  On my first batch, I think I got 4 small jars of dressing.  Once sampled I knew what I wanted to make more of!

My parents came to visit over the 4th of July and brought a boatload of strawberries from the family farm in NY.  I froze a lot of them for smoothies which I am quite fond of and the rest were prepped for shortcake, dressing, and eating.

So I stood at the sink cleaning and hulling strawberries into the night time hours (in my very best clothes to boot!).  I of course sampled as I went.  Can't beat fresh berries from the patch!  

The process was a bit more labor intensive with the full recipe in use:

http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes/strawberry-vinaigrette-dressing

Just more berries to squeeze juices from was really the major impact.  The rest was pretty simple.  I still love this as a dressing and I am so glad I made more than the 4 jars from the first batch.  Scrumptious!