The summer harvest is in full swing here in Southern New England. It was the very day that I pulled out my books on canning and preserving that my partner surprised me with two quarts of sour cherries that he harvested off of a friend’s trees.
I haven’t done a lot of work with cherries in the past. A number of years ago, I bought some from a farmer’s market and attempted to make my own Maraschino cherries (in infusion in Maraschino liquor) but it turns out that I am of the opinion that Maraschino liquor tastes remarkably like cough syrup and the cherries were less than desirable. They tasted better than the liquor itself but weren’t better than the expensive “real” Maraschino cherries that you can buy at specialty stores (better than the corn syrup ones you can source at your average grocer, though).
That said, I’ve been very into jam-making this year. This spring I made jam from both forsythia and violet and last month my bestie and I made strawberry jam the old-fashioned way (sans pectin). Since I was momentarily feeling sugared out and didn’t want dessert – I decided that jam was a great way of preserving the sour cherries.
Jam making is deceptively easy – it’s really just fruit, sugar, and sometimes some pectin. If you want to can your concoctions (which I highly recommend – there’s nothing better than getting to open a can of summer goodness in the dead of winter) – you need to do slightly more work and have extra supplies (cans, fresh lids, etc.) but well-made jam will keep in the fridge or freezer for a number of months.
The main work of the cherry processing was having to pit and then cut up the cherries. I’m honestly not sure, given the size of the sour cherries, why the recipe called for chopping them further, but I followed through since I like to follow recipes exactly if I am not familiar with the process. Pitting sour cherries is actually pretty easy – if they are ripe, you can simply squeeze the pits out and into a separate container. It’s so easy that I did it with one hand while drinking a mango lassi out of the other.
From there, you need to follow your recipe for making jam. I’m not going to give an exact recipe since the method depends on the type of pectin that you have available to you. This is more important than many recipe blogs on the internet let on – YOU NEED TO MATCH YOUR RECIPE TO THE PECTIN THAT YOU ARE USING (or use an alternate source for pectic such as green apples if they are available to you).
In season, I will use apples to pectinate my jams and jellies but since I can’t find organic apples at this time of the year (and with my endo, it’s very important that I avoid pesticides as much as possible), I tend to go with high-quality pectin that I can buy at stores. Note: not all jam/jellies require pectin – I love making jam that does not but will add pectin when necessary for setting.
That said, following the recipe on this pectin label, it called for a lot of pectin which it definitely didn’t need. Now I know, next year I’ll halve the amount. And there definitely will be a next year now that I know that my friends have wild sour cherry trees! (Wild now, they must have been planted at some point)
So my “jam” is about the consistency of homemade cranberry sauce – it actually tastes remarkably similar as well due to the sourness of the cherries. Though set beyond my preference, it is very, very tasty.
And we had some cherries left over after I processed them and added in the requisite 4 cups called for in my jam recipe! (More to come next week on what I did with the rest of my cherries.)