In summer, the sprawling cherry trees with their juicy cherries invite you to make your own cherry juice. Several methods can be used for this, with one being significantly simpler than all the others. In any case, the cherry juice will taste fruity and delicious.
Cherries must be pitted before juicing in the saucepan
Obstacles before enjoying cherries: pits and drosophila
Once the cherries are off the tree, nothing stands in the way of enjoying the fruit, right? An unpleasant problem are the maggots of the spotted-wing drosophila, which likes to eat through the pulp around the cherry stone. If you do not cover the tree in time, there is a high probability that you will discover small holes in some cherries, which indicate a maggot infestation.
However, there is no need to worry: Even if you eat the small white maggots or juice affected cherries, you do not have to fear any health risks. How careful you should be when sorting out the cherries depends on your tolerance for small animals in your food. Many are of the opinion: Better a little worm than a lot of pesticides!
As with any stone fruit, the preparation of the cherries before processing is quite time-consuming: pitting the small fruits involves lots of red splashes and laborious manual work with a knife or stoner. If you want to juice cherries, you can skip this step if you are using a steam juicer. This saves you a lot of time and nerves. All other juicing methods require you to pit the cherries.
juicing methods for cherries
By far the most recommended method for juicing cherries is to use a steam juicer. It takes significantly less time than all other types of juicing because the cherries do not have to be pitted.
- Put the washed cherries with pits into the fruit basket of the steam extractor. You can sweeten the cherries if you like.
- Fill the bottom pot with a little water, place the juice container on top and the fruit basket on top.
- With the lid closed, the steam juicer must now be on the stove for an hour.
- The finished hot cherry juice then flows through the spout into prepared containers and can be kept for several months without further boiling.
You can also boil the cherries in a saucepan with a little water. However, it is much easier to push the fruit through a sieve if you have pitted the cherries before cooking. You should also filter the cherry juice obtained through a cloth and heat it up again in order to fill it up hot and thus preserve it.
If you want to preserve as many of the cherry's vital substances as possible and don't intend to store the juice, you should cold-juice your cherries. A juicer and a centrifugal juicer are suitable for this. Even when using these electrical devices, you must stone the cherries beforehand. You should drink the finished juice immediately, as it spoils quickly.
The garden journal freshness ABC
How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?
The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:
- as a free PDF file to print out yourself