On the home front - Canning sweet cherries!
It’s been years ago now that I last canned sweet cherries. My husband has a favorite fruit salad recipe from his mom that we “have to have” for Thanksgiving and various other special occasions. The original recipe calls for Royal Anne cherries -a light sweet cherry that isn’t as sweet as a Bing.
These are only available to buy fresh for about 2 weeks out of the year. Sometimes they catch me by surprise - so much so that I don’t even notice they have come and gone by the time I get in the mood to can them. The supermarket doesn’t carry them in jars - at least not that I’ve found regularly. Not saying that we can’t find them anywhere - just not the places I normally shop. I don’t want to go “schlepping” around Warsaw looking for canned sweet cherries when I can can them every few years and have them on my shelf.
I used up my last jar earlier this year - and I knew I absolutely HAD to can some this year. So I started getting myself psyched up to do it again. Honestly…since the kids all left home I’ve not had much oomph to do all that much cooking - would much rather sew. There are many reasons for that, but among them - don’t want to, don’t need to eat as much - and it means I have to spend too much of my day “thinking about” food - which I really don’t want to do, and it means I have less time to do what I want to do - which is mostly sewing.
However, on Saturday, with the help of my husband we got 14 more quart jars canned. I had leftover cherries, so we’ve been eating them fresh which we will continue to do until they are gone.
How did we do it? Let me show you.
We found some cherries in Warsaw - Falenica bazaar - the lady said they were from her own orchard. I actually prefer buying from people who either pick their own or have their own gardens, orchards, fields, etc. I like to support them.
One time when Rachael was here we went to this same bazaar and bought a bunch of blueberries from some young people who drove in from another part of the country and they and their family had picked them (wild - think the Alaskan or Maine blueberries that are about 1/4” - 3/8’ in diamter).
But I digress.
We bought 14 kilos and we paid 18 zl/kilo, ($4.51/ kilogram or 2.2 lbs.) so that was $2.05/lb for fresh cherries. They have gone up dramatically, but these were mighty nice looking cherries. I don’t think I threw away a single bad one. We decided to not try to get them for less - figuring that her prices had also gone up in the intervening years. Last time I remember buying them I remember them at less than half this price.
My husband said he would help “pit” them (we have a cherry pitter) - and I knew that would help me tremendously.
I just follow the directions as found in my well-used Betty Crocker cookbook.
So, I washed the jars, got them ready to fill, found the lids and rings and put them in a pot of water to boil (didn’t turn it on yet), got the canner going - put a bunch of water in and turned on the stove top- takes forever to bring it to boil—, started stemming the cherries and then I called my husband and told him I was ready for him to start “pitting”. I gave him a bowl of stemmed cherries and he started his “pitting” process.
I suppose the best way is showing a series of pictures - I tried to take pictures of each of the steps.
I use light syrup when canning the cherries and use a boiling water bath for 25 minutes for the quart jars. My big canner will hold 7 quarts at a time.
My husband is a meticulous cherry pitter - probably much better at it than I am - so hopefully there will be no pits in the cherries! (Sometimes when I do them, I let a few slide through.) He worked at the table, using the pitter and filling the clean quart jars. When 6 of them were filled, I took them to the kitchen and started filling them with the light syrup and putting them in the canner. By the time I had the 6th one in the canner, he had the 7th quart jar ready for me to put the syrup on and put in the canner. Once I put the cherries into the canner, which had boiling water in it, I had to wait til the water came to a boil again and then let it boil for another 25 minutes. In the meantime, my husband kept “pitting” and I stopped stemming because we had enough for another 7 quarts. We saved the leftover cherries just to eat fresh.
I am happy to have this little project done. I’ll put away all my canning supplies now til the fall. I want to buy some blueberries in July but I want to freeze those so it’s very easy! In the fall I’d like to make salsa again.
Until then, I’ll store my supplies.
leftover cherries we are eating fresh (shown just some of the leftovers!)
We would have been much faster had I been in more practice. I’ve not done much canning lately so I wasn’t moving very efficiently.
We had finished all the “work” part by about 1:30 pm and were just waiting on the canner to come to a boil again. We were all done by about 2:30 pm.
Thankfully they all sealed. As of this writing I haven’t removed the rings and stored them, but that is the next thing to be done!
And now you know. it’s not rocket science - but we have our own home canned light cherries (sweet - but not ‘uber’ sweet) for Mike’s fruit salad for several years to come! The only ingredients - cherries, sugar, and water.
Now back to sewing!
Have a great day wherever you are reading this!
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