Don't Skip This Step For Picture-Perfect Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

If there's a dessert that seems extravagant while also being incredibly simple, it's chocolate-covered strawberries. On a party platter, it conveys a celebratory vibe and feels like a real treat. Yet it's actually one of the easiest desserts to make. There's just one step that can cause consternation among cooks, and that's when chocolate seizes up, suddenly turning into concrete in your bowl and making it impossible to dip your precious berries. The culprit? Water. 

Anyone who's melted chocolate with a water bath and had the water boil over into the pot or produce steam and condensation knows that even a drop of H20 can absolutely stop your chocolate dipping in its tracks. So, after thoroughly washing your strawberries (but before dipping them in your melted chocolate), you must dry them thoroughly.

Whatever your preferred type of chocolate for coating your berries, it should be couverture chocolate, which means it contains at least 31% cocoa butter, which is rich in fat. That's what helps the chocolate to become glossy and smooth when it's melted, which is just what you want for your dipping. But as anyone who's made salad dressing knows, water and fat do not like each other. Most of what's in your chocolate, in fact, is water-repelling, except for sugar: Sugar loves water. Have you ever dug a spoon with water droplets on it into a sugar bowl? The sugar will be attracted to the droplets and will clump around them — and they'll usually stay there. So when a drop of water gets into melted chocolate, that's essentially what happens. The sugar rushes to the water and grabs hold to it tightly, separating from the fats.

What does this mean for your chocolate-covered strawberries? If you wash your berries (as you should) and skip the drying step or don't dry thoroughly enough, even the tiniest water droplets on the surface will cause the chocolate to seize, preventing it from sticking to the berry. You'll have patchy berries, at best, and a bowl full of clumps. The best course of action is to wash them, then pat them with a towel (including the leaves and stems), then let them air dry and get to room temperature, then dip. This drying step should help you get the picture-perfect chocolate-covered strawberries you're craving.