These Jarred Sour Cherries Should Live In Your Pantry
Most canned fruit should be ignored on the grocery store shelf, left to sit in its thick, sugary, gloppy syrup. The one exception? Sour cherries. (Okay, so they usually come in a glass jar, but it’s the same idea.)
Sour cherries are a variety of cherry that are, as their name suggests, tart and sour. Like their sweeter counterparts, sour cherries are only around for a couple of months in May and June, when we fill our tote bags with them. But unlike their sweeter counterparts, they’re too acidic to eat fresh out of hand, unless you like to pucker up. We like to pit them and bake them in pies and other summer desserts (even this pizza!). When you don’t have time (or patience) to pit pounds of cherries, or get caught out of season and can’t find them—go to the jar. Jarred cherries are available all year round and will impart the same flavor to whatever you’re cooking.
There are several brands out there, but senior food editor Chris Morocco is partial to Trader Joe’s Dark Morello Cherries in Light Syrup (Morello is a variety of sour cherries), which, you can find online.
“No matter the brand, the most important thing is that they must come in a light syrup,” Morocco says. “If it’s a heavy syrup, that means they’ll be coated in an ultra-thick, ultra-sweet liquid. Light syrup is just mildly sweetened water, perfect for containing the cherries but not turning the whole jar into a viscous, tooth-ache-inducing mess. The cherries retain their shape and biting flavor, and you can easily drain them before you use them.”
Drained, they’re still quite sour, though toned down from being packed in sugar syrup, which is why we like to use them for baking. They’re a great sub for rhubarb in this Buckwheat Rhubarb and Strawberry Galette, since rhubarb isn’t the most readily available produce. You can toss them in sugar and throw them in a cake, like this Easy One Bowl Upside Down Cake. They’re fantastic in pies, or mixed into yogurt for breakfast. Try cooking them down with some sugar and water, giving them a compote-like consistency to spoon over ice cream. They’re truly the cherry on top.
