A friend is coming over this weekend with 10 pounds of cherries and we are going to jam em up. I’ve not done a cherry preserve before so i’ve not had the opportunity to manually pit 1000 cherries. Any tips? tricks? I’ve only ever removed the pit by scraping the cherry flesh off with my teeth, which seems a bit much. After I’ve chewed up and spit out a thousand cherries i’ll probably be tired of cherry flavor an end up having to give the whole batch to friends and neighbors.
Also interested in exciting cherry mush jam recipes. Anything beyond squish fruit, add sugar and pectin, and put in jars would be appreciated.
A collander is a funnel with a bunch of holes in it, like a strainer, that sits in a little frame and you put it over a bowl. There is a short wood bat that fits inside. You put berries, apple chunks, or other fruit inside and rotate the bat around and the fruit oozes through the holes and the seeds stay in the funnel. After awhile you just dump the seeds and refill with new berries.
Don’t know if it will work with cherries but I don’t see why not. It’s not high tech and I doubt if it’s expensive. We have had ours for 30-40 years and still works fine. Great for making applesause or fruit jellies or de-seeding lots of things.
I’ve always thought that the thing **ghardester **describes was a food mill too. Although you could do it with a colander and a big spoon, scraper, or some such - it just might be a real pain.
I’m certain they sell cherry pitters at Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond or any other kitchen gadget store you have in your area.
As it happens, last night I pitted and chopped about a dozen fresh cherries for a salad. About halfway through I mentioned that it was probably the last time I’d do it, since it was on the far side of the mythical Trouble Line.
Googling up some “Good Eats,” Alton addresses pitters in scenes five and six of “Olive Me.” He concedes that, though unitasker-ish, pitters can be used on both olives and cherries. He also suggests just sticking the olive/cherry under a bench scraper and giving it a good whack, though that leads to the admission that it won’t do as good a job as a pitter would.
Nope. This description (from ghardester) refers to a chinois. Another description, with photos: Chinois - Wikipedia - per the Wikipedia entry, “china cap” is another term (chinois[e] has a finer mesh). A neighbor of mine had one of these when I was young; I used to help her make homemade tomato juice using it.