Strawberry basil water
Sounds pretentious. Tastes like the best thing in the fridge.
Basil in a drink reads as a chef showing off. It is not — the peppery, faintly aniseed note underneath basil is exactly what strawberry needs to stop tasting flat once it hits water.
This is the one to make if you have tried infused water before and found it boring. It genuinely tastes of something, and it does it without a gram of added sugar.
How to make it
- Hands on
- 5 min
- Total
- 1 h 35 min
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Per glass
- 8 kcal
Ingredients
Method
-
Halve the strawberries
Hull and halve them. Cut fruit gives up colour and flavour far faster than whole fruit, and strawberries are soft enough that they do not need slicing thinner than this.
-
Bruise the basil
Press the basil leaves once between your palms. Torn basil goes black and bitter in water — a single firm press is all it needs.
-
Combine and chill
Add both to the jug, top with cold water, and refrigerate for 90 minutes. The water turns pale pink when it is ready.
-
Serve over ice
Strain into glasses or pour carefully. Drink it the same day — strawberries break down faster than any other fruit here.
Worth knowing
- Slightly overripe strawberries are better for this than perfect ones. The flavour is more available and you are not eating them anyway.
- It will not keep past a day. Strawberries go cloudy and faintly fermented on day two.
What it actually does for you
- Calories
- 8 kcal
The best-tasting option here and, like every infused water, nutritionally close to nothing. Strawberries hold a lot of vitamin C but almost all of it stays in the fruit rather than moving into the water. Drink it because it makes two litres go down easily, not because of the strawberries.
How this was worked out: 250 g of strawberries holds roughly 80 kcal, 12 g sugar and 380 mg potassium (USDA FoodData Central, strawberries, raw). Infusion transfers only a fraction, so the 8 kcal per glass is an approximation and no mineral figure is claimed.
Variations
- Add a squeeze of lemon to hold the pink colour for longer.
- Swap basil for mint if basil is a step too far.
- Blend the leftovers with ice instead of throwing them out — that is a smoothie.
Making it is the easy part
Remembering to drink it is the hard part. Honk watches your webcam with on-device AI and honks until you do, as gently or as loudly as you like.
Meet Honk → join the waitlistQuestions
Can you eat the strawberries afterwards?
You can, and they are fine, but they are noticeably bland — the flavour you tasted in the water came out of them. If you want to use them up, blend them rather than eat them plain.
Why did my basil turn black?
It was torn or crushed too hard. Basil bruises easily and the damaged cells oxidise fast in water. Press each leaf once and leave it whole.
