If you can't use your entire cherry harvest fresh, pickling is an easy way of preserving: boiled down in sugar water with various flavorings or pickled in alcohol, the cherries will keep for at least a year and taste particularly delicious.

Whether as rum cherries or as jam - pickled cherries are delicious

Tipsy cherries: a recipe for rum cherries

Cherries marinated in rum taste fine and aromatic with waffles, a wintry dessert or in an ice cream sundae. You have the choice of pickling the cherries with or without the stone. With a core they keep their shape better, without a core they can be easily processed later. If you have inserted pitted cherries, you can later process the rum mixture into cherry liqueur.

  1. Prepare mason jars by rinsing them in hot water or sterilizing them in the oven.
  2. Wash the cherries thoroughly, dry them carefully and discard any bruised ones.
  3. Either trim the stalks or remove them and the seeds.
  4. Fill the cherries alternately with 250 g sugar per kg in the glasses up to thumb width below the rim. If you like, you can layer in spices like cinnamon, aniseed, or vanilla.
  5. Fill the glasses with a good high proof rum and close them. The cherries must be completely covered by the alcohol in order for them to be preserved.
  6. Allow the cherries to steep for at least four weeks and use within a year.

Sweet and juicy: a recipe for preserved cherries

Sweet and sour cherries boiled in sugar water have a long shelf life and are versatile. Whether in a cake, compote or as a treat between meals, cherries preserved without alcohol always cut a fine figure. Here, too, you have the option of inserting the cherries either pitted or with the stone in them.

  1. Prepare sterile glasses. You can use both those with screw caps and classic mason jars.
  2. Discard bruised cherries and wash any remaining ones.
  3. Cut the stalks in half or remove them along with the seeds.
  4. Fill the prepared glasses with the cherries up to the width of the thumb below the rim.
  5. Boil 1 liter of water per kg of cherries and dissolve 400 g of sugar in it. Add spices like cardamom, cinnamon or cloves to taste.
  6. Allow the sugar syrup to cool and then fill the glasses with it.
  7. Boil the tightly closed jars for half an hour at 80 °C. You can do this either in hot water in a saucepan or in the dripping pan filled with water in the oven.
  8. Consume the cherries within a year.

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

Category:

Vegetable garden