These are little bits of summer stored to help us through the cold winter. These are bing cherries canned in a light sugar water syrup. All natural and perfect to strain and use in yogurt, oatmeal or pour the juice and the cherries over vanilla ice cream, angel food cake, or vanilla pudding. They are great in smoothies and right out of the jar as a snack!! This is so easy and you can have cherries, crisp and fresh all year long this way!! In the winter when my children bring some to school as a fruit their friends hound them for some.
Here is the way to make your Cherry Pitter (a must have and you have what you need to make it)
You DO NOT need special equipment to can. I will post about that in another post. As long as you have a big “spaghetti” size pot, you are good to go!! New to canning go here or here to see directions or check youtube.
How to make our family CANNED CHERRIES:
Fill a spaghetti pot of hot water 1/2 way, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer
In a another pot bring 6 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar to a bowl (you can reduce for less sweetness)
Choose the size jars you are going to can in, lids and rings
Sterilize them in the dishwasher or you can fill your sink with hot water when the syrup is ready and keep all hot pulling one out at a time to fill and placing back in hot water (standing up with water below rim) until ready to add all to the hot water simmering)
pit cherries and stuff them into jars (you can do as many as you like as it’s simple to make more syrup if needed) leaving 1/2 in headspace at top of jar
fill with hot syrup leaving 1/2 in headspace at top of jar
tap jar lightly on potholder to remove bubbles
place on lid and wipe jar around the top
place on right and tighten slightly (You do not have to make sure it’s super tight)
place in hot water standing up to keep them hot until putting into simmering water
once all jars are filled, place in simmering water making sure the tops are covered with 2 inches of water
bring water to a rolling boil and process for 20 minutes
remove and let cool listening for the lids to make a “popping” sound when they seal
once cool, run your fingers over the lids to make sure the middle is “sucked” down
store in a cool, dark, dry place for a year
FREEZING CHERRIES — you can freeze cherries also which is way cheaper than buying them frozen in the store. First wash and clean the cherries. You can pit them or leave them whole. Dry them and lay them on a cookie sheet in the freezer for 30 minutes. Remove and place into freezer bags and store in freezer for up to a year. These are great in smoothies or ice cream and you can make another cherry pie if you need to!!
chase n chance ranch 
Looking at your canned goods so reminds me of my grandmother who was always well stocked. If I make one batch of something, that is a success. This year I’m going for pickles.
That’s what I am down to. I have 2 shelves like that stocked by October usually 🙂 I make dill pickles and dill beans. My grandmother and a few close friends wait for them for Christmas gifts and I bring them to every family gathering we have. It’s so easy and they taste so wonderful. But that post won’t be for a few more weeks waiting on the cukes and beans to grow larger.
Tomorrow we are going to pick our 18 quarts of strawberries and Sunday will be my jam day.
I’ll be looking for your recipe for pickles.
Love all of your great ideas! I plan on trying them out… one day. It’s great to see someone canning and creating such delicious things themselves, as opposed to buying them. Both of my grandmothers use to can, make jams, etc. Definitely a tradition I hope to be able to carry on… Thanks for the inspiration and memories 🙂
I was raised watching and helping my mom and grandmothers when they used to do most of these things. I am 48 now and in my 20’s I had no desire to do any of this. Then I hit 35 and then had children and realized how much I loved those memories and wanted to make sure I shared the tradition with my children. Came back to my roots so to speak. You will do it when the time is right 🙂