How to eat cherries. All you need to know from how to choose, store, pit and enjoy cherries at their best during the short and sweet cherry season and beyond.
Cherries are one of the sweet gems of the earth for us to enjoy spring through summer. Another one of Mother Nature’s exquisite designs, cherries are truly as gorgeous as they are delicious.
Cherry Season
Sweet cherry picking season is typically from mid May through August, depending on the cherry variety, and where you live. Some early season cherries are harvested in April. Sour cherries are generally harvested in July or August.
The variegated cherry tree photos were taken in the last few days of May in the long unpaved driveway where we lived in Tuscany. If you are a cherry lover, you probably can’t beat eating any of the sweet cherry varieties that come into markets in June, and July.
Spring and Summer:
peak time to enjoy sweet cherries:
Choosing Cherries
Color doesn’t matter. Choose shiny, plump, good-looking cherries with green stems still attached.
How to Store Cherries
Keep the stems on your cherries until eating, to keep them fresher longer.
Once picked, cherries are not fruits that ripen to perfection at room temperature.
Refrigerate cherries to keep them fresh, with pits and stems, unwashed or completely dry, until ready to use.
Cherries freeze well, but they can lose their shape, so you may want them destined for things like smoothies, yogurt, syrups, cakes, icecream…
Freeze cherries pitted, rinsed and dried. If you want to grab a few at a time out of the freezer later, first freeze them with space around them on a sheet pan Then once frozen, transfer to your chosen long-term container. And remember to eat them within the year.
Pitting Cherries
Rinse and pit cherries just when you are ready to eat or use them, or as close as possible. You can pit cherries with the stem on or off. A cherry pitter comes in very handy when you need to pit a lot of cherries. However, you can go ad hoc and use things you have around the house, like a chopstick or paper clip. Plan to eat, use, or freeze the cherries promptly after pitting.
- Read more on how to pit cherries, when and why you should pit cherries, and when you actually may not want to.
- How to remove cherry pits from your mouth politely?
How to Eat Cherries
Of course, the very best way to eat gorgeous plump sweet cherries at peak season is naturally: Just eat them! Outdoors is even better.
Here’s another simple way to eat fresh cherries: Chocolate Covered Cherries Recipe
How to Eat Sweet Cherries
- Prunus Avium: sweet cherries we love to eat raw from the tree
- tossed in fruit salads and green salads
- chocolate covered cherries (recipe)
- stewed
- compotes
- liqueurs
- pickled
- granita, sorbet
- on top or stirred into ice cream, yogurt
- cakes, pies, tarts, clafoutis
- cooked with savory dishes such as roast duck, venison…
How to Eat Sour Cherries
- Prunus Cerasus: tart, more acidic cherries with less sugar
- have a super short season and don’t travel well
- used more in preserved form: dried, canned, bottled
- juices, syrups, sorbets
- liqueurs
- compotes, jams – over yogurt…
- fresh or dried in puddings, strudels, pies, cakes, tarts, with granola…
- fresh or dried in savory dishes: with rice, in soups and stews, sauces for roast duck, venison, lamb, chicken, fish…
Fun Facts About Cherries
Did you know?
- Cerasum is the Latin name for cherry, after the ancient Greek region of Kerasous, or Cerasus, on the Black Sea, where cherries are believed to be indigenous — now Giresun, Turkey, the biggest grower of cherries in the world.
- The Roman Lucullus, according to Pliny the Elder, gets credit for capturing the cherry (or collecting it after Anatolian conquests), and taking it back to Rome sometime around 70 BC. Italy is still a lead cherry producer among Mediterranean countries.
- Cherries are drupes, aka stone fruit, having pits along with other prunus family members: plums, apricots, peaches, almonds; as well as olives, pistachios, dates, and coffee cherries.
Bonus Tip: How to politely remove a cherry pit from your mouth without a napkin
A big bowl of fresh cherries, simply left whole with their green stems attached, is beautiful to serve to company during peak cherry season. But what do you do with the cherry pits? You certainly don’t want to swallow them. And definitely not chew them. Beyond possibly cracking teeth, chewing cherry pits releases amygdalin that your body transforms into toxic cyanide. Ok, thankfully that’s what napkins are for. But wait, there’s not a napkin in sight!
How do you politely remove a cherry pit from your mouth without a napkin?
(Applies to olive pits too.) Just raise an open fist (thumb on outside of clenched hand like a makeshift spyglass or horn) up to your mouth like you would if you were to blow through it. Stealthily release the cherry stone into the perfect space made from your rolled up fist, and discard. Have another cherry and repeat.
