Sharing another canning recipe, because I couldn’t stop canning every fruit and vegetable in sight. I found this Bourbon Vanilla Soaked Cherries recipe on the lovely Kristy’s food blog, She Eats and it was a no brainer to try it out. Her recipe is small batch canning, but I was looking to go all out, so I doubled her recipe. I love love love cherries and the idea of canning them to put on ice cream or in a cake later in the year sounds delightful!
First, lets take a moment to talk about pitting cherries. It can be bit of a nightmare, mostly because it’s stupidly messy, but it’s worth it!! I figure, take the time to pit them now so you don’t have to deal with them later.
I thought about buying a cherry pitter, but then I took a moment to search for some alternative ideas. The one that worked the best was a straw, the internet gods used a regular straw, but after trying it out, it just didn’t hold up, so I tried a sturdy reusable straw. I had one from a reusable drink container, kind of like this one.
Take a cherry, cup it in your hand and poke the straw inside the cherry, it will force the pit out the back end and the cherry stays in one piece. It worked like a charm, but I suggest wearing old clothes, because pits and juice shoot everywhere. Another suggestion is to work outside so you don’t have to clean your kitchen.
Bourbon Vanilla Soaked Cherries
Makes approximately 8 250mL jars.
It depends on how tightly you pack them.
Ingredients:
8 Cups Fresh Cherries
5 Cups Water
5 Cups Sugar (white, brown, cane, it’s all good)
2 Lemons for juice
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
8-16 oz Bourbon
Supplies:
1 waterbath canner pot with rack
Canning tongs
Magnetic lid lifter (we didn’t bother with this)
Canning Jars
Large spoon or ladle
1 medium saucepan
Instructions:
Make a sugar syrup by placing water and sugar in a saucepan and bringing to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and stir the mixture constantly until the sugar is dissolved. Add in lemon juice and vanilla extract and remove from heat.
While you’re making the sugar syrup, bring your canner to a boil with as many jars that will fit. I like to sterilize more jars than necessary just incase!
Sterilize your jars for 25 minutes, in the last 10-15 minutes add your canning tongs, lids, rings and other utensils.
Place your sterilized jars on a clean towel, using clean hands fill jars with pitted cherries and leave about 3/4 inch head space.
Pour 1-2 Oz of bourbon over the cherries. Top with hot sugar syrup leaving 1/4 head space.
Secure with rims and lids and process in a canning bath for 15 minutes. Carefully remove jars from water with canning tongs and place on a towel. Once they are cool, make sure they’re sealed. Refrigerate any that don’t, they should last a few weeks.
Loosen the rings to make sure any water that’s under there will dry and prevent rusting.
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The OXO cherry pitter is an absolutely indispensable tool. I used to have one of those old-school metal ones that was way too big and too stiff for my hand. Got the OXO one and pitted 15lbs of cherries in one sitting. My kitchen still looked like a murder scene, despite the little splatter guard, but SO MUCH EASIER than a chopstick or a straw. Also, a happy cherry is a bourbon soaked cherry 🙂
Thanks for the tip! For me I prefer to have less gadgets in my drawers, I don’t pit cherries often, so a reusable metal straw works great for me, but I could see why people love a pitter! 🙂