Sunday, July 17, 2011

Cherries anyone?

I found a really good deal on cherries the other day in the store.  $1.99 a pound, out here that's cheep since they are normally $4 a pound and up.  So I bought 3 of those useless zippered produce bags full.  Landed 6.5 pounds.  What to do, what to do, what to do?  Had no idea, but hubby offered to eat all of them right then and there.  Pulled out the canning books and nothing appealed to me so I just decided to put them in syrup and be done with it.  Yes I saved out a handful for hubby but the rest went into the jars!

Canned cherries
6 pounds cherries (or a little more)
6 cups water
3 cups sugar

First you might want to pit the cherries.  Or not, decision is totally up to you, just be sure to label them as unpitted if you don't.  Wouldn't want any dental injuries in the middle of a midnight snack would we?  For me, well I have this mid-evil looking contraption that was given to me a few years ago and it was claimed to be a pitter but, well, I have no idea how rolling cherries down across a ribbed wheel would work without loosing a lot of juice so I opted to poke them out with a heavy duty chopstick.  Just hold the cherry and push it through the stem end.  Takes a few tries to get it perfect and you'll get lovely stained hand for your effort.
Heat up water and sugar to boiling.  Pack jars to half inch head space.  Ladle syrup over them to half inch head space, make sure there are no bubbles and lid up.  Boiling water bath 20 minutes for pints.
Landed myself 11 pints:

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