I could google this, but it’s more interesting to ask my fellow Dopers, personal favorite recipes are the best.
I have a glut of cherries, the tart pie variety. I’ve already made four pies, and someone is going to dry some for me, for later inclusion in cookies and breads. My mother is making cherry jam.
What’s something else with cherries that’s good?
I can barely ever find enough to make one pie, where did you get more than you know what to do with?
My cherry tree got hit by a windstorm at blossomtime this year, so I didn’t get much fruit.
Rather than blow it all on a couple pies, I made Maraschino cherries:
4 1/2 lb Pitted red cherries
4 1/2 lb White sugar
3 c Water
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 oz Almond extract
1 oz Red coloring
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Brine
2 qt Water
2 tb Salt
1 ts Alum
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Soak pitted cherries overnight in heated brine.
The next morning, drain cherries. Rinse in cold water to remove Alum.
Mix cherries, water, sugar, lemon juice, and red coloring. Heat to boiling.
Let stand 24 hours. Drain and boil juices, pour over cherries and let stand a day.
Repeat drain and boil. Add almond extract and cherries. Pack in
hot sterilized jars and seal (25 min in an unpressurized cooker)
Getting the pits out while leaving the stem attached is a bit tricky. Martha Stewart recommends a bent paperclip. I ended up using a small, curved surgical forcep. Poked in from the side, you work it over the top of the pit, close it to sever stem from seed, then grab the pit and pull out.
I’m going to save this one. The cherries I have are pitted and destemmed already, but tonight I have a chance to go back for more. My mother does canning and I’m sure she’d help.
Robot Arm, the cherries came from two sources. Next door neighbors of my sister just moved into their house, and they have a cherry tree that is beyond loaded. They said to my sister to help herself, as they won’t have time for them. Then a cousin of mine, who lives on a farm in Nebraska, came down to visit and gave our family a lot of cherries. It took my mother and me a total of over six working hours to pit them all. Three hours of work was worth getting all that fruit for free. I may be going back there in about an hour or so, to my sister’s neighbors house, to pick even more. And they have an apricot tree that’s so loaded the branches are bent down almost to the ground, and again we are told to help ourselves.
Yum!
I too make maraschino cherries, but I do it the lazy way: I dump cherries in a jar and cover them with maraschino.
They don’t taste anything like store-bought maraschino cherries, but they’re quite good; and the liquid from the maceration tastes good in manhattans.
When I made this, I left off the wine, chipotles, and lemon zest. I also used Maraschino cherries and used the liquid for the base.
May I suggest adding bluberries to the mix? I make a killer CherryBerry pie that’s popular and as a bonus, purple.
Cherry juice marinated chicken sweet and sour over rice is pretty good too.
Chop up some cherries. Incubate with chicken chunks plus cinnamon and ground cloves.
Fry up some veggies, peppers, fresh ginger, water chestnuts.
Brown up the chicken, add the veggies, and some more cherry halves, sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Thicken. Serve over rice cooked in chicken stock with strips of black fungus.
Cherry clafoutis? Cherry crisp? You could probably make some interesting granitas or ice creams.
You’re lucky. I love tart cherries.
Lute, that sauce sounds really interesting, I may give it a go. got to go buy some wine, lemon and the pappers, but I have most of the rest on hand. Thanks a lot!
Squink, that chicken recipe sounds good too. I have some good jasmine rice that would make it even better, but I need to buy the chicken.
And Lissa, I forgot about clafoutis, I think I have a recipe and picture of it in one of my cookbooks.
I just had good luck today blending them into my pancake mix. Makes a nice tart flavouring to contrast the sweet.
I did cherry ice cream this evening. Mmm, half and half, heavy cream, sugar, cherries, vanilla, and a dash of salt. The recipe made three quarts, and I’m supposed to take some to a BBQ on Monday. But I can hear it now, sitting in the freezer, calling my name.
I did make pies of course. And cherry juice over ice was tasty. I may be able to pick just a few more. I really want to try that barbeque sauce.
Cherry juice with amaretto over ice is very tasty.
Normally at about this time every year one of my local grocery stores sells ten pounds of pitted tart cherries (in a big plastic bucket) for $25. I freeze them and use them all year. When they go on sale this summer I’m going to do a white cake filled with cherries and whipped cream, and covered with a cherry juice glaze. After that, I will probably explode.