Category: Preserving Fruit

How to Can Cherries

Posted on by craig

I’ve spoken a fair bit in the past month of the tart Nanking cherries we harvest from a friend’s parents’ tree, but it’s a bit annual thing for us. It’s this one-time harvest of dozens of pounds of cherries and they need to be used ASAP before they go bad.

For the most part, we freeze the cherries as soon as we get them because they’re in the height of summer when we’re being overrun with foods that we’re harvesting. But once my schedule starts to open up, I juice the cherries and can the juice, and then at a later point when I’ve got more time, I start a batch of cherry wine (which is incredibly tasty).

While I’m generally not a fan of cherries, I do find that I enjoy eating these tart Nanking cherries as I pick them. I figured it was time to attempt canning cherries—for eating later in the year but also for garnishes on fancy drinks.

Canning cherries

Canning cherries is easy and safe. Cherries—both sweet and tart—have an acidity level that makes them safe for water bath canning.

Canning cherries is an easy beginner-friendly water bath canning recipe, so if you’re new to canning and have worried about the safety of canned food, this is a great starter project.

The only downside is pitting all the cherries. There are different tools and gimmicks for pitting cherries, from a cherry pitter, to stabbing a chopstick through the cherry (to push the stone through), to using an unfolded paperclip to scoop out the pit. But I found that none of these tricks worked, so I carefully used a sharp knife to slice open every cherry and pull out the pit. While this means I don’t have any whole uncut cherries in my end result, that’s really not as big a deal as it might feel like.

Tart cherries like mine can easily brown while you’re in the process of pitting them all, so to stave off that browning, you can put pitted cherries in a bowl of water with a splash of lemon juice mixed in.

Your choice of syrup (or water)

Cherries are acidic enough that they could be canned in just water, but canning them in a syrup of sugar-water complements the taste of both sweet and tart cherries perfectly.

Following the advice of a couple websites, I chose to go with a very light syrup of three-quarters cup of sugar, dissolved in six and a half cups of water. It’s light enough that the tart cherries should retain their tartness and the sweet cherries shouldn’t become overly sweet.

When I eventually opened a jar of my canned cherries and ate my way through the cherries, I found that it had indeed reserved that sharp tartness. Perhaps a bit too sharp. If I can cherries again next year, I may look at using a heavier syrup to see how it affects the taste; hopefully the sweetness will counter the sourness a bit, but still allow that distinct tart taste to shine through.

If you want to start off with a heavier syrup, consult the chart below for various syrup “heaviness-es”. For what it’s worth, the National Center for Home Food Preservation (which is where this chart comes from) recommends a medium syrup for sweet cherries and heavy syrup for sour cherries.

Syrup TypeCups of SugarCups of Water
Very Light3/46-1/2
Light1-1/25-3/4
Medium2-1/45-1/4
Heavy3-1/45
Very Heavy4-1/44-1/4

How to can cherries

You can raw pack cherries by placing the cherries in the jar, covering them with syrup, and then processing the jars in the canner. However, the hot pack method produces better results as the pre-canning process removes some of the air from the cherries and they then sit in the final jar better, and it also reduces the processing time in the canner.

To hot pack cherries, start by making your syrup. The ratios in the table above should be fine for 11 pounds of cherries (weighed before pitting), so if you’re dealing with a larger or smaller batch, you’ll want to adjust your syrup quantities. I tend to over-do the syrup quantities a bit whenever I’m canning because I find I usually need a little more than the recipe calls for.

In a large pot, bring syrup and cherries to a boil. As soon as the boiling point is reached, cherries can be transferred to jars.

Whether you’re raw packing or hot packing cherries, fill jars with cherries and syrup to a half-inch headspace. Using a bubble remover tool or a non-metal chopstick, remove bubbles from the jar and add extra syrup if needed to bring the headspace back to a half inch. Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, to remove any stickiness that might impede a proper seal. Place lids on, then screw ring on to fingertip tightness.

Place jars in a water bath canner and top with hot water until jars are submerged by 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a boil and let boil for the appropriate length of time on the chart below. If the water ever stops boiling, the water must be brought to a boil again and the timer restarted.

Hot Pack
(Pints or Smaller)		Hot Pack
(Quarts)		Raw Pack
(Quarts or Smaller)
Elevation
0 – 1,000 feet		15 minutes20 minutes25 minutes
Elevation
1,001 – 3,000 feet		20 minutes25 minutes30 minutes
Elevation
3,001 – 6,000 feet		20 minutes30 minutes35 minutes
Elevation
6,001+ feet		25 minutes35 minutes40 minutes

Once the processing time has finished, remove the pot from heat and let sit for five minutes. Then, carefully using a jar lifter, remove jars from the canner and place on a thick towel on a counter or table and let them sit undisturbed overnight. In the morning, check if jars have sealed, if so, they can be stored in a cool dark place and should be consumed within a year—after a year, the food is still safe provided the seal is not broken, but quality may degrade. If any jars have not sealed, place jars in the fridge and consume promptly.

Canned Cherries

Canning cherries is simple and easy to do, and keeps that fresh taste of summer preserved for the depths of winter.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 15 minutes
Course Fruit
Cuisine Fruit

Equipment

  • Water Bath Canner
  • Mason Jars with Lids and Rings, quart size or smaller

Ingredients
  

  • 11 pounds Cherries, Sweet or Tart, weighed before pitting
  • Sugar, as per preference in the instructions below

Instructions
 

  • Wash, stem, and pit cherries. Tart cherries may turn brown after pitting, so they can be temporarily put in a large bowl of water with a splash of lemon juice mixed in.
  • Prepare syrup, as per your preference, dissolving sugar in water. This can be done on the stove, heating until fully dissolved.
    Very light syrup: ¾ cup sugar, 6½ cup water
    Light syrup: 1½ cup sugar, 5¾ cup water
    Medium syrup: 2¼ cup sugar, 5¼ cup water
    Heavy syrup: 3¼ cup sugar, 5 cup water
    Very heavy syrup: 4¼ cup sugar, 4¼ cup water
    Cherries can also be canned in water only. The National Center for Home Food Preservation recommends medium syrup for sweet cherries and heavy syrup for tart cherries.
  • For raw pack canning:
    Fill jars with cherries and syrup, leaving half-inch headspace. Debubble and add syrup if needed. Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Put on lids and screw rings to fingertip tightness.
    For hot pack canning:
    Add cherries to pot of syrup and bring to a boil. As soon as mixture boils, fill jars with cherries and syrup, leaving half-inch headspace. Debubble and add syrup if needed. Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Put on lids and screw rings to fingertip tightness.
  • Put jars in a water bath canner, fill with hot water until jars are submerged beneath 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a boil on the stove. Once boiling, process for the indicated time below. If at any time the water stops boiling, bring to a boil again and restart the timer.
    For raw pack canning (quarts or smaller):
    0-1,000 ft: 25 minutes
    1,001-3,000 ft: 30 minutes
    3,001-6,000 ft: 35 minutes
    6,001+ ft: 40 minutes
    For hot pack canning (quarts):
    0-1,000 ft: 20 minutes
    1,001-3,000 ft: 25 minutes
    3,001-6,000 ft: 30 minutes
    6,001+ ft: 35 minutes
    For hot pack canning (pints or smaller):
    0-1,000 ft: 15 minutes
    1,001-6,000 ft: 20 minutes
    6,001+ ft: 25 minutes
  • Remove canner from heat and let sit five minutes. Carefully using a jar lifter, remove jars from canner. Place jars on a thick towel on a counter or table overnight. In the morning, check that jars have sealed. If so, jars can be stored in a cool dark place for up to a year. If any jars have not sealed, place them in the fridge and consume promptly.
Keyword canning cherries

How to Can Tart Cherry Juice

Posted on by craig

I’ve spoken a few times on this site so far about the friend’s parents’ place that has a cherry tree and a few apple trees. Earlier this summer we went and harvested the cherries and we made sure to get every last cherry we could reach, and ended up with a record harvest of around 45 pounds (compared to 25 pounds last year).

Their cherries are Nanking cherries, which are quite tart. And it was with these cherries that I learned I actually do enjoy eating some cherries. These are very delicious, if a little mouth-puckering sour at times. My mom later gave me a sweet cherry to try, to see if I liked it, and, well, I didn’t. Tart cherries are the one for me! (It’s the same with grapes—I enjoy the sourness of green grapes but really don’t like sweeter red grapes.)

When we harvest the cherries, we wash them all, let them dry a bit, and then bag them up and freeze them. We very rarely use fresh cherries.

(If I’m feeling ambitious, this cherry liqueur is phenomenal when made with tart cherries. Do this recipe exactly the same, just with tart cherries instead of sweet cherries.)

For the rest, I turn the cherries into juice and make wine from the juice.

This year, with a record cherry harvest and a record rhubarb harvest (115 pounds versus our previous record of 85 pounds), I needed to clear out the freezer to prepare for the oncoming haul of peas, corn, broccoli, and peppers that are destined for the freezer. I wasn’t ready to start a batch of cherry wine, so I decided to juice them and then can the juice, so it’s ready to go when I want, but it’s not taking up freezer space.

Once the garden season slows down in the late fall / early winter, I’ll pop these jars open and get started on a batch of tart cherry wine, which is incredibly delicious.

The safety of canning tart cherry juice

I did enter into this project with great trepidation. I couldn’t find recipes or guidance on canning cherry juice from the official websites / organizations that fully lab-tested recipes to ensure safety. With canning, if done improperly, you run the risk of botulism, which is undetectable when opening a contaminated jar and can kill you.

However, I dug a little deeper. There are food bloggers that fully explain the safety of food and their reasoning in determining if something is safe. If I could find that, I’d be good to go. Thankfully, that’s where I found the information I needed. I found a few websites that talk about the safety of canning tart cherry juice and, most importantly, why it’s safe. As I suspected, tart cherry juice is acidic enough to be safely canned. However, please use your own best judgement in assessing if this is right for you, since, as I said, there are no lab tested recipes from the most-trusted sources.

How to can tart cherry juice

This recipe applies only to tart cherry juice and not to sweet cherry juice. There are different levels of acidity and sugar, and I have not researched sweet cherries since I do not have access to them.

The first step is to juice your cherries. I pulled out my steam juicer to tackle this project. I’ve posted previously on using a steam juicer to juice cherries, so check out that post if you want the step by step breakdown.

If you don’t have a steam juicer, there are other options for juicing—this website lists a variety of ways to juice cherries.

Once you have clear, sediment-free cherry juice, you’re ready to start the process of canning.

You can use any jar up to the half-gallon size; the only difference between the sizes is the half-gallon has a longer processing time.

Fill jars with tart cherry juice, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Place lids on and screw on bands to fingertip tightness.

Place jars in a water bath canner and add water to ensure jars are submerged by at least two inches of water. Turn stove on high and once the water is boiling, let boil / process for five minutes, or for ten minutes if you’re using half-gallon jars. If the pot stops boiling at any point, bring back to a boil and restart the timer. If you’re at a higher elevation, adjust your processing time using this chart.

When the processing time is over, remove the pot from heat and let sit for five minutes. After five minutes is up, carefully use a jar lifter to remove the jars from the pot and set them on a thick towel on the counter overnight.

The next day, check the jars to ensure they have sealed—the lid is curved downward. If so, jars can be stored in a cool, dark place for at least a year. If not, place these jars in the fridge and consume promptly.

Canned Tart Cherry Juice

Sour cherry juice is easy to make and safe to can, and makes an excellent base for mixed drinks or even enjoying as-is.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Cook Time 5 minutes
Course Drinks

Equipment

  • Water Bath Canner
  • Mason Jars, with Lids and Rings

Ingredients
  

  • Tart Cherry Juice

Instructions
 

  • Fill clean mason jars, up to half-gallon size, with tart cherry juice, leaving ¼ inch headspace.
  • Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Place on lid and screw ring to fingertip tightness.
  • Place jars in a water bath canner, fill with water until submerged by 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a boil. Once water is boiling, start the timer. For jar sizes up to one litre / one quart, processing time is five minutes. For half-gallon sizes, processing time is ten minutes. If the water ever stops boiling, bring to a boil again and restart the timer. If you're at a higher altitude, adjust your timing as necessary.
  • When process time is up, remove pot from heat and let sit an additional five minutes. If you're at a higher altitude, adjust your timing as necessary.
  • Using a jar lifter, carefully remove jars from canner and place on a thick towel on a counter or table and let sit undisturbed overnight.
  • The next morning, check if jars have sealed (lid is depressed), and store in a cool dark place for up to a year. If jars have not sealed, place in the fridge and consume promptly.

Notes

This recipe applies to tart cherry juice only, as tart cherries are acidic enough to be safely water bath canned. This recipe does not apply to sweet cherries.
Keyword nanking cherry juice, sour cherry juice, tart cherry juice

How to Can Apple Juice

Posted on by craig

Fruit trees are something we’ve always been interested in, but there’s just no room for them on our property. Thankfully, a friend’s parents have a few fruit trees and don’t do anything with the fruit, so raiding their trees is a summer tradition for my husband and I.

Three of those trees are apple trees. Unfortunately, one of them didn’t get a single apple this year and another still needs about another month before the apples are ready—but the third tree was ready this past week, so John and I headed out for our first apple tree raid of the year.

We managed to get 142 pounds of apples from the one tree! We’re being more diligent this year about making sure we take everything. Last year, we took most of the fruit, but not all. I ended up juicing the apples and we soon learned we loved having apple juice on hand in the fridge. Our supply of juice last year ended up lasting almost a full year. We drank our last one about a month ago.

Last year we got 285 pounds of apples, so about double what we’ve harvested so far this year. We don’t think the second tree will give use enough to match or beat last year’s haul, but fingers crossed it’s still a heavy yield.

Juicing the apples

How you juice the apples is up to you.

Last year I did them with a traditional juicer with the spinning grate. The benefit of this is that it’s quick. I managed to juice all my apples in one day. The drawback is there’s a lot of sediment in the juice and it gets very messy when doing large batches. I was constantly cleaning the apple pulp out of the juicer, which meant it was often accidentally splattering all over the place.

I collected the juice in a large pot and skimmed off all the foam that was forming, as this often had a lot of sediment in it.

This year I pulled out my new steam juicer. WOW was it ever cleaner and easier to do—I chopped up the apples, put them in the juicer, and let the thing do its work. The drawback though is how long it takes. It took me three full days to juice all 142 pounds of apples. But the juice was sediment free and required no filtering.

A steam juicer is a three tiered pot where the bottom level contains the boiling water, the top level is a colander that holds the fruit, and the middle level collects the juice that drips down from the colander. The steam heats up the fruit and makes the juice burst out of the fruit. Here’s a more detailed post from when I juiced cherries with a steam juicer.

Whether you’re using a mechanic juicer, a steam juicer, or some other device, follow the instructions that came with the device if they differ from what’s written here.

If you don’t have a juicer, here’s a post on WikiHow that explains how to do it on the stove or in a blender.

You want the juice to be as clear and sediment free as possible. A steam juicer does a great job, but a mechanical juicer can create some sediment, and the methods in the WikiHow article could also create sediment. You can strain the apple juice through a sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth to filter this out. Alternatively, if you’re doing a smaller batch, you can store the juice in the fridge overnight so the sediment settles, and then carefully ladle the juice out into a clean pot.

Safely canning apple juice

However you choose to juice your apples, once you’ve got apple juice, the juice can be easily canned with a water bath canner.

I found some difficulty in nailing down a recipe for safe apple juice canning. The recipe I used last year required no lemon juice as it was assumed the apple juice is acidic enough on its own. In researching again this year, I found a recipe that called for 3 tablespoons of lemon juice for a three-liter batch (which is a tablespoon per liter), and then found a recipe that called for 3 tablespoons of lemon juice for a six-liter batch (which is half a tablespoon per liter).

While I had no reason to doubt any of the sources, I went with the last one—3 tablespoons per six liters—as that was from my Bernardin canning book (the Canadian version of the well-known Ball canning book), which is a very trusted source.

The next step was figuring out how I was going to do this. The recipe calls for juicing apples, adding the lemon juice to the apple juice, pasteurizing it, and then canning it. But I wasn’t doing the exact 24 pounds of apples the recipe calls for, I was doing 142 pounds. Plus, I don’t think these apples are as juicy as the ones they used in the Bernardin recipe. So I altered the recipe to add the lemon juice straight to the jar, which makes the recipe highly adaptable to any amount of apples and apple juice.

How to can apple juice

Once you’ve got clear, sediment-free apple juice, transfer it all to a big pot and heat it on the stove until it reaches 190 degrees Farenheit, and hold it at that temperature for five minutes. A candy thermometer is helpful for this step. I have one of those laser temperature readers, which seems to give a pretty accurate reading. This step pasteurizes the juice to get rid of any bacteria or yeast on the apples.

While the juice is warming, prepare your jars. I find I don’t need to immerse the jars in boiling water, but running them under a hot tap for a moment can help warm the glass and prep them for hot apple juice.

Add lemon juice directly to the jars:

  • 1/2 Tbsp of lemon juice for a liter / 1,000 ml jar
  • 1 tsp of lemon juice for a pint / 500 ml jar
  • 1/2 tsp of lemon juice for a half-pint / 250 ml jar

Make sure to use bottled lemon juice rather than fresh squeezed lemon juice. You need to reach a certain level of acidity for safe canning and bottled lemon juice has consistent acid levels, whereas fresh lemons can be highly variable.

Ladle hot apple juice into the jars, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace.

Wipe the rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. This removes any juice and sugar from the rim that might prevent a proper canning seal from forming. Screw on lids to fingertip tightness.

Place the jars in a water bath canner and fill with hot water, submerging the jars with at least an inch of water. Bring to a boil on the stove. Once the canner has reached a full boil, remain at this boil for ten minutes. (Putting a lid on will prevent your kitchen from getting too steamy.) If you turn down the temperature and it stops boiling, bring it back to a boil and re-start the ten minute timer. If you’re in a higher elevation, adjust your processing time with this chart.

When the ten minutes is over, remove the pot from the heat and let it sit for five minutes, then using a jar lifter carefully remove the jars and let them sit on a towel on the counter or table overnight. In the morning, check that a seal has formed (the lid is depressed). Sealed jars can be stored in a cool dark space for at least a year. Any jars that did not seal should go in the fridge and be used immediately.

Canned Apple Juice

If you're making homemade apple juice, canning the juice is a great way to keep it fresh all year long.
5 from 1 vote
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Course Drinks
Cuisine American

Equipment

  • 1 Water Bath Canning Pot
  • Mason Jars Size and quantity depends on how much juice you're canning

Ingredients
  

  • Apple Juice
  • Lemon Juice

Instructions
 

  • Start with clear, sediment-free apple juice.
  • In a pot on the stove, bring the apple juice up to 190℉ and maintain this temperature for five minutes.
  • In a mason jar, add lemon juice — ½ Tbsp for one litre jars, 1 tsp for pint (500 ml) jars, ½ tsp for half-pint (250ml jars) — and then carefully ladle in hot apple juice, leaving a ¼ inch headspace.
  • Wipe jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar. Put on lid and screw band to fingertip tightness.
  • Process in a water bath canner for ten minutes. Once the water boils is when the timer starts, and the water must boil throughout the ten minutes. If it stops boiling, bring to a boil again and restart the timer. If you're in a higher elevation, adjust your processing time using this chart.
  • When timer is finished, remove pot from heat and let sit for five minutes.
  • With a jar lifter, carefully remove jars from pot and transfer to a thick towel on a counter or table and let cool undisturbed for 12-24 hours. If seals have formed (lid is depressed downward), jars can be stored in a cool dark place for at least a year. If seals have not formed, place jars in the fridge and consume promptly.

Notes

This recipe can be used for one litre (1,000ml) / quart jars, pint (500ml) jars, and half-pint (250ml) jars.
Keyword apple juice

How to Juice Cherries Using a Steam Juicer

Posted on by craig

After hearing multiple times on food preservation blogs about the convenience of a steam juicer and how passionately people appreciate having them, I finally purchased one in late 2023. (This one, to be specific.) It ended up just sitting in its box on a chair in the kitchen for months.

I had several bags of cherries sitting in my freezer waiting to be juiced, but I kept putting it off thinking that, despite what people say online, it would be a messy, exhausting process. My traditional electric juicer is messy and exhausting to use with big batches—it’s the kind with the spinning grater that grinds up the fruit/veg and separates the juice from most (but not all) the solids. Whenever I would use that, I’d end up with bits and pieces of fruit/veg all over the kitchen, no matter how careful I am with being neat and tidy. And it’s a process that requires a ton of work, from prepping the fruit/veg, to manually pushing it through the juicer, to having to stop and clean out the solids every so often.

That juicer works terribly with cherries. I think the fruit is too soft and light and it ends up throwing the fruit around rather than truly juicing it. As well, to use that juicer I have to stem and pit all the cherries first.

I had five bags in the freezer, weighing somewhere around 30 pounds. I wasn’t going to stem and pit them all.

So, I finally pulled the steam juicer out and…what a revelation!

What is a steam juicer?

Steam juicers are a specialized piece of kitchen equipment consisting of three pots that fit together.

The bottom pot is filled with water and when the stove is turned on, this boils and releases steam into the system, which allows all the juicing magic to work.

The top pot is really a colander—the bottom and sides of it has dozens and dozens of holes. The fruit or veg gets put in this pot. The steam rises, releases the juice from the fruit/veg, and the juice drips through the colander holes into the middle pot.

This pan can fit a lot of fruit. It took only three run-throughs to process all my cherries.

The middle pot is almost bundt-pan like. There’s a hole in the centre for the steam to rise and make all this magic happen. The juice collects in this pot and, when you’re ready, there’s a hose and clamp attached to it so you can drain the juice into jars.

How to juice cherries using a steam juicer

Fill the bottom pot with water. If the instructions specify to fill it to a certain level, always follow these instructions. Mine did not have a specific level required, so I just filled it up to near-full.

Place the middle pot on top. My bottom pot has a little half-circle cut out of its top lip to accommodate the hosing from the middle pot, so if yours has that too, ensure these are properly aligned as it’ll mean the pieces are all fitting together properly.

Place the top pot on top.

Wash/rinse cherries and remove any with blemishes, underripe fruit, or anything else that looks less-than-ideal. I read through a handful of instructions online and it seems to be mixed on if the cherries should be pitted and destemmed first, so I did not bother with this.

Fill the top pot with cherries. In the photo below, mine are still semi-frozen. If you have frozen cherries, you don’t need to thaw them first.

Put the lid on.

Set the burner to high until the water boils, then reduce the heat so it continues to simmer.

Let the steam juicer do its work. I found it took about an hour for a potful of cherries to fully juice.

Every once in a while, carefully lift off the middle and top pots to check on the water level in the bottom pot. If needed, add hot water (or boiling water fresh from the kettle) to top up its levels. I also regularly checked on the volume level in the middle pot since I wasn’t sure how much juice was going to be pulled from the cherries—I didn’t want to run the risk of it overflowing and that precious juice falling down into the water pot. You can also check on the cherries in the top pot to give you a sense of how far along you are—once the volume had decreased about 75%, that was my cue that I was just about done. Please use oven mitts as the handles can get very hot.

When everything is fully processed, carefully remove from heat and use the hose to drain the juice into jars or whatever storage vessel you’re using. Once the majority of the juice has drained, you’ll want to carefully tip the pot forward a little bit to pool the remaining juice in front of the hose. To be safe, you might want to remove the top pot and put it aside, so the unit isn’t top-heavy and at risk of completely tipping.

Alternatively, to get the last of the juice, you can lift the middle pot right out and pour the juice directly from the pot into the jar, while being very careful not to spill hot juice on yourself.

How to preserve cherry juice

My attempt at juicing cherries resulted in about three gallons of juice. With this I set up three one-gallon batches of cherry wine and was left with a litre (four cups) of cherry juice. I just stuck these in the fridge so my husband and I can add it to our kombucha.

However, there are several options here:

  • If you don’t have a lot and will use it soon, put it in an airtight container and store it in the fridge.
  • Juice can be frozen in jars or plastic containers. When I freeze juice, I try to use straight-sided jars that don’t have shoulders—sometimes juice can expand when freezing and you don’t want to risk the jar breaking—and I leave about an inch of headspace. You can likely store it for several months before quality starts to degrade.
  • Cherry juice can also be canned! (This site has some instructions)
  • There are endless other options, including cherry wine, cherry jelly, popsicles, and more.

How to Juice Cherries Using a Steam Juicer

With the use of a steam juicer, juicing cherries is easy, quick, and clean, giving you pure cherry juice.
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Course Beverage

Equipment

  • 1 Steam Juicer

Ingredients
  

  • Cherries
  • Water

Instructions
 

  • Wash and drain cherries. No need to de-stem or de-pit them. Remove any cherries that have blemishes or are damaged.
  • Set up the steam juicer as per the instructions that came with your juicer. If you don't have instructions, fill the bottom pot with water till nearly full, then place the juice collector pot on top, and then the colander pot on top.
  • Fill the colander pot with cherries and cover with the lid.
  • Turn on stove to high until the water in the bottom pot is boiling, then reduce heat to medium and keep water simmering.
  • Let simmer for approximately an hour, until cherries have been juiced.
  • Turn off the stove and remove the pot from heat. Being careful since things are hot, release the lamp and drain cherry juice into jars or other storage containers. Cherry remnants may be composted or discarded.
  • Juice can be used immediately in recipes that call for cherry juice. If you're planning to use or consume it in the next few days, juice can be stored in the fridge. For longer storage, juice can be frozen in mason jars or other freezer-safe containers—but leave some headspace and avoid jars with "shoulders" in case juice expands when frozen as this can shatter a jar. Juice can also be canned using a water bath canner (this site has some instructions).
Keyword cherry, cherry juice, juice

How to Preserve Saskatoons (Serviceberries, Juneberries) in a Sugar-Kombucha Brine

Posted on by craig

Saskatoons are a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them crop.

We have a large saskatoon bush in our front yard. About a week ago, I was looking at the bush on a Saturday afternoon. The berries were starting to ripen—they’re perfect when they’re so dark-purple that they’re almost black—and decided I’d start picking the ripest ones the following day.

Well, Sunday morning rolls around and I head outside to discover that the birds had stripped the entire bush in less than twenty-four hours. Not only did they eat all of the ripe and almost-ripe berries, but they ate all of the completely-unripe berries too.

I had plans for those berries. I make a super-tasty saskatoon and Grand Marnier jam that some friends look forward to every year, and I had hoped to try making a batch of saskatoon wine.

Thankfully, a family member came to the rescue. He knows a good spot to find wild saskatoons and not long after the birds had devastated my crop, I was handed buckets and buckets of berries. I had enough for the jam and the wine, with plenty left over.

“Saskatoons” is apparently a very regional name for these berries. Whenever I would search for Saskatoon recipes online, the options were extremely limited—basically just pies or jam. My husband and I aren’t really dessert people and I’ve never baked a pie in my life, so I never knew what to do with these and we’d just eat them as-is.

One day I encountered a blog post about something called serviceberries and there was an off-hand anecdote in the post about how some people know them as saskatoons or juneberries. Suddenly I had the key to finding more recipes and posts about this little short-season fruit.

If you’ve never had saskatoons before, I sort of think of them as similar to a blueberry. However, that similarity is more in the size, shape, and colour, though to me the taste isn’t super dissimilar.

My saskatoon bush produces nice, plump, juicy berries. The wild ones are considerably smaller, as is often the case with wild versus cultivated fruit.

Back to the cooking adventure:

After making the jam (which I didn’t photograph, so I won’t get a blog post about it this year, but if you’re curious, it’s this recipe), setting up the wine (which I’ll post about in several months when it’s ready to drink so I can also comment on taste), and flavouring a batch of kombucha with saskatoons and blueberries, I was still left with more saskatoons than I knew what to do with.

I decided to give preserving them a try. It had worked well with blueberries, so theoretically I might get the same result with saskatoons.

I pulled up the recipe and set out to experiment. The photos in this post are of a double-batch of the recipe at the bottom.

To start, mix unflavoured kombucha, sugar, salt, and water together and set aside. Rinse the berries and then put them into the fermentation jar. Pour the brine on top, make sure everything is submerged (preferably with a weight), close it (with an airlock), and let it sit for a few days. Taste it daily until desired doneness, which for us was three days, same as with the blueberries.

This was a bit of a disaster in the process, requiring quick thinking to make things work.

The first is that since I wanted a double batch, it was too much for my fermentation kit. That was easy enough to solve—I’ll just use a bigger jar.

I got everything mixed up and put inside. When I went to put the fermentation weight on top of the berries, that was my next problem—the weight was designed for a wide-mouth jar and I was using a standard-mouth jar. I also didn’t have any wide-mouth jars on hand to just switch jars.

You can usually use a ziplock bag filled with water as a weight, but there wasn’t much room in the jar, so I decided to risk it and skip the weight. I made sure to stir the mixture with a spoon every twelve hours or so, to push the top berries underneath so nothing was floating on top too long.

Then came the problem with the lid. The fermentation lid, similar to the weight, was manufactured for a wide-mouth jar, so it didn’t fit the jar I was using. Luckily I have some wine-making equipment on hand, so I poked a hole in a mason jar lid and stuck an airlock in it. (In the absence of that, the next best thing would be to loosely put on a two-part mason jar lid. Theoretically, the weight of the lid would keep it down and keep out unwanted air, but also be loose enough to allow gas build-up inside to release.)

All potential disasters overcome, the project succeeded.

Once the berries are ready and fully fermented, I replaced the makeshift airlock lid with a regular lid and stuck it in the fridge. If you’re using a fermentation kit, you might want to transfer the berries to a new jar to free up the kit for the next fermentation project.

The fully fermented berries are wonderful on their own. The kombucha sugar brine gives it a sweet juicy taste, and as they continue to ferment (albeit more slowly) in the fridge, they may develop a fizzy texture felt on the tongue when eating them—some folks dislike this and some enjoy this.

Other than eating them straight out of the jar, they make a great topping for yogurt, ice cream, overnight oats, or any other food where you want a little bit of fresh fruit mixed in.

Even if the birds hadn’t stripped my berries in under twenty-four hours, the saskatoon season is so incredibly short. Last year, the birds left the bush alone and I got to harvest the berries—I got buckets of them off only one bush—and we enjoyed our saskatoon harvest for about a week and a half. After that, they were finished with until this year.

This spring we planted two more saskatoon bushes in our yard. Either we’ll have so many berries that even if the birds raid a bush we’ll still have some for ourselves, or we’ll just attract more birds and they’ll all know our yard is the place to be. As frustrating as it is to have the birds abscond with the harvest, we do appreciate that someone enjoyed the berries, even if it can’t be us.

Sugar-Brine Fermented Saskatoons (Serviceberries, Juneberries)

With sugar, kombucha, and a few other ingredients, saskatoons (also known as serviceberries or juneberries) can be easily fermented and last for weeks in the fridge.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Fermenting Time 3 days
Course Fruit
Cuisine Fruit

Equipment

  • 1 Fermenting Jar or Fermenting Kit See notes for alternatives

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups Saskatoons / Serviceberries / Juneberries
  • 6 Tbsp Kombucha, unflavoured
  • ¾ tsp Salt
  • 6 Tbsp Sugar
  • 9 Tbsp Water

Instructions
 

  • Mix all ingredients except for the berries.
  • Clean berries and then put them in the fermentation jar.
  • Pour the kombucha-sugar mixture on top.
  • Put the fermentation weight on top of the blueberries.
  • After twenty-four hours, taste-test daily until desired doneness. For us, we determined this was after three days, but the length of time will vary based on the temperature in your kitchen and various other factors.
    Transfer to a clean jar and store in the fridge.
    I'm not sure of the shelf life, but the jar in our fridge has been there a month and they're still good.

Notes

A fermentation kit usually has a jar, a weight, and an airlock. This is the one I have and it worked perfectly for this. (I can’t find it on Amazon, but if you’re in Canada, I got it at Canadian Tire. Alternatively, here’s a more expensive and more complete kit from the same company available on Amazon, though it looks like it’s several lids and weights but you provide your own jar.) If you don’t have a fermentation kit, you can use any jar that’s big enough to hold all of this, and then use a Ziplock bag filled with water as a weight. You might get scum forming on the bag and that’s okay.
Keyword juneberries, preserving berries, saskatoons, serviceberries

How to Preserve Blueberries in a Sugar and Kombucha Brine

Posted on by craig

A while back I tried fermenting blueberries with a salt solution. While it worked and the blueberries were fermented and were able to sit in the fridge for several weeks, it wasn’t my husband’s favourite. He could never really get rid of the salty flavour of the brine.

I was determined to make this work. My husband loves blueberries, but he eats them slowly, so they’re at risk of going bad before he finishes them. Plus, when they’re on sale it’s always tempting to buy extra and save some money.

Thankfully while researching salt fermentation, I’d also come across a sugar fermentation method that used sugar and kombucha. Since we brew our own kombucha (and that’ll eventually get posted on this site), this seemed like an easy one worth trying.

As long as you have kombucha, this one is easy and simple to put together. If you’re buying your kombucha in the store, you’ll want to make sure it’s pretty fresh bottle so that you can be reasonably sure that the beneficial bacteria is all still alive. You’ll want unflavoured / plain kombucha so that you don’t end up flavouring the blueberries with whatever flavour you purchased (though that might be an experiment worth trying someday—I bet ginger kombucha would make lightly gingered blueberries). If you’re home-brewing your kombucha, I scooped some out for this recipe right before adding the fruit into the kombucha.

The one piece of equipment you’ll need is a fermentation kit. Here’s the one I have. (I can’t find it on Amazon, but if you’re in Canada, I got it from Canadian Tire. Alternatively, here’s a more expensive kit from the same company available on Amazon, though it looks like it’s several lids and weights but you provide your own jar.) However, this is also optional—you can just use a large, clean jar, and when it comes to the step where you need the fermentation weight, you can use a Ziplock bag full of water.

This recipe really couldn’t be simpler, provided you have the ingredients and fermentation kit.

In a bowl or large glass, store together kombucha, salt, sugar, and water until everything is dissolved and nicely mixed. Then rinse or wash the blueberries to ensure they’re clean, then put them into the fermentation jar. Pour the kombucha/sugar solution on top, close the lid, and let it sit on your counter.

After a full 24 hours, taste test it daily until you reach a desired doneness.

In everything I’ve read about this, similarly to when I tried the salt fermentation, there’s never a definition of what doneness is and how to tell if it’s ready. So… my recommendation is to just wing it. With a full 24 hours on the counter, the beneficial bacteria and yeast from the kombucha will have fully established itself in your jar of blueberries, so you’ll have some of that preservation effect even if you call it done too early. At a worst case scenario, if you call it done way too early, the blueberries might go mouldy like they normally would, so next time you just let it ferment a little longer.

For us, it took about three days till my husband felt they were fermented enough and ready to go.

I transferred the blueberries and brine to a new jar and put it in the fridge. Even if you didn’t let it fully ferment before putting it in the fridge, that fermentation action will continue to happen, just at a much slower pace due to the cold of the fridge.

I think it’s been about three times now that my husband has said to me “That new way of fermenting blueberries is really good.” To me, that’s the mark of success.

For longevity of the blueberries… I don’t really know yet how long they last. The jar pictured here is still in our fridge (though much emptier now) and it’s been a full month, and the blueberries are still tasty and delicious.

Kombucha eventually turns vinegary, so if left a really long time, these might taste a bit pickled. If you reach that point, it’d probably be best to throw them out and start a new batch.

My husband eats these straight out of the jar with a spoon—they’re that good—but this is also an excellent way to preserve blueberries for smoothies or to toss on top of ice cream.

I’m tempted to try this same preservation method with Saskatoons (sometimes known as serviceberries). We’ve got a bush in our front yard and last year got quite the harvest. They’re similar in size to blueberries, though I think with less moisture content. If I do try it and if it’s a success, then stay tuned for the recipe!

Sugar-Brine Fermented Blueberries

With sugar, kombucha, and a few other ingredients, blueberries can be easily fermented and last for weeks in the fridge.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Fermenting Time 3 days
Course Fruit
Cuisine Fruit

Equipment

  • 1 Fermenting Jar or Fermenting Kit See notes for alternatives

Ingredients
  

  • 2 cups Blueberries
  • 6 Tbsp Kombucha, unflavoured
  • ¾ tsp Salt
  • 6 Tbsp Sugar
  • 9 Tbsp Water

Instructions
 

  • Mix all ingredients except for the blueberries.
  • Clean blueberries and then put them in the fermentation jar.
  • Pour the kombucha-sugar mixture on top.
  • Put the fermentation weight on top of the blueberries.
  • After twenty-four hours, taste-test daily until desired doneness. For us, we determined this was after three days, but the length of time will vary based on the temperature in your kitchen and various other factors.
    Transfer to a clean jar and store in the fridge.
    I'm not sure of the shelf life, but the jar in our fridge has been there a month and they're still good.

Notes

A fermentation kit usually has a jar, a weight, and an airlock. This is the one I have and it worked perfectly for this. (I can’t find it on Amazon, but if you’re in Canada, I got it at Canadian Tire. Alternatively, here’s a more expensive and more complete kit from the same company available on Amazon, though it looks like it’s several lids and weights but you provide your own jar.) If you don’t have a fermentation kit, you can use any jar that’s big enough to hold all of this, and then use a Ziplock bag filled with water as a weight. You might get scum forming on the bag and that’s okay.
Keyword Blueberries, fermented blueberries, preserved blueberries

How to Ferment Blueberries Using Salt

Posted on by craig

I try to buy food in smaller quantities because we hate food waste and we also don’t like having to overeat something just to avoid throwing it out.

But a sale is a sale.

Blueberries were dirt cheap a few weeks ago and my husband eats them. I decided to buy more than double his normal amount and I intended to experiment with preserving them via fermentation.

Fermentation typically preserves fruits and vegetables by allowing good bacteria to thrive and destroying bad bacteria. The good bacteria is typically probiotic bacteria, so in addition to being good for food preservation, it’s also good for your gut.

There are apparently two ways to ferment blueberries—one is with 2% salt by weight and the other is with a sugar brine. For this, I decided to go with the salt process, and I’ll try the sugar brine next time blueberries are on sale (update: here it is).

Blueberries, salt, and a fermentation kit are all that’s needed.

A couple years ago I received this handy fermentation kit for Christmas. It comes with a large glass jar, a glass fermentation weight, and an airlock lid.

While this specific recipe doesn’t include submerging blueberries in liquid, most fermentation recipes do, so a fermentation weight helps keep the food below the liquid level. The fermentation process creates gas, so the airlock lid lets the gas escape without worrying about pressure building up.

If you don’t have a fermentation kit, you can easily construct a makeshift one.

You’ll want:

  • A large glass jar, preferably with a wide mouth.
  • Something to act as a weight; this could be a Ziploc bag with water in it, or a smaller jar that can fit inside the fermentation jar, or if you’re using a really large jar with a really large mouth, you might even be able to fit a small plate in there.
  • In the absence of an airlock lid, you can just use a normal lid, but you’ll want to “burp” it regularly, which means opening it to allow the gas to escape. In this recipe, you can have the lid slightly loose so gas can escape on its own, or you can burp it every twelve hours or so.

As far as fermentation projects go, and I haven’t done a whole lot but I’ve done some, fermenting blueberries is reasonably simple. You need a weight for the blueberries and then you calculate 2% of this weight to figure out how much salt to add.

425 grams of blueberries
8.5 (rounded up to 9) grams of salt

Mix it all in a bowl, transfer to your fermentation jar, and you just let it sit for a few days.

It took us about four days until we felt they were fermented. You can see in the photos that the level of the weight sunk a bit, which I think was caused by blueberry juice being expressed.

Day one level of blueberries
Day four level of blueberries

The recipes I looked up all said something along the lines of tasting it daily until it’s ready…but never really defined how you determine if it’s ready. It takes three to seven days, so I would say that it’s reasonably safe to assume that anytime after three days, if it’s tasting reasonably good, it’s likely safe to call it ready. By that time, the beneficial bacteria will have already taken over and gotten a good start at doing their work of preserving the blueberries—in other words, if it’s not perfectly fermented, it’s likely fermented enough to get the preservation effect that we’re after. If you find you enjoy fermented blueberries, you’ll develop a skill over time of determining by taste if the blueberries are ready.

If you used a Ziploc bag with water as your weight, you may find some scuzzy growth on there. Before I got my fermentation kit and I was fermenting tomatoes, I found this to be the case. As long as the blueberries look and smell fine, simply clean off the bag and reuse it.

If at any point there is fuzzy mould growth on the berries or if it ever smells or tastes like something’s gone wrong, dispose the berries and start over. The old adage of “when in doubt, throw it out” holds true here.

When the berries are ready, simply remove the weight, seal the jar, and move the blueberries to the fridge. For me, that meant transferring the blueberries to a new jar so my fermenting kit isn’t taken up with storing blueberries.

Ready to go in the fridge

One of the byproducts of this form of fermentation is acetic acid, or vinegar. So the final result is a little bit sour. Understandably, the final result is also a little bit salty from, well, all the salt. It should also be a bit sweet. It’s an interesting mix of flavours. They’re probably best eaten on top of oatmeal or mixed in a smoothie where some of the “unique” aspects of the taste can be masked by the other ingredients.

My husband isn’t really a fan of blueberries preserved like this because he likes to eat the blueberries straight and that sour-salty tang isn’t his thing.

When I was researching this, I came across a second version of fermenting blueberries that uses a sugar brine as well as some kombucha, or water kefir, or whey. I brew both kombucha and water kefir, so I’m eager to try this alternative method. Of the two of them, I’m likely going to try the kefir version because kombucha can taste a bit vinegary, but with my extremely limited water kefir experience, there’s no vinegary taste there. Watch for that recipe to appear here in coming months. (Update: here it is.)

Lacto-Fermented Blueberries (2% Salt Method)

If you have an abundance of blueberries, fermenting them is a great option to preserve them and enjoy them for weeks, plus fermenting creates beneficial probiotic bacteria for a healthy gut.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Fermentation Time (Estimate) 3 days
Course Snack

Equipment

  • 1 Kitchen Scale
  • 1 Fermentation Vessel with Weight This can be a fermentation kit or simply a jar with something to weigh down the blueberries, such as a Ziploc bag with water in it, or a smaller jar that fits inside the fermentation jar.

Ingredients
  

  • Blueberries
  • Salt, non-iodized

Instructions
 

  • Rinse and dry blueberries.
  • Place blueberries in a bowl and weigh them. (Be sure to hit the "tare" or "zero" button before adding the blueberries to the bowl so you are weighing only the blueberries.)
  • Calculate 2% of this weight and add that amount of salt. (For example, if you have 800g of blueberries, use a calculator to do 800 x 0.02, to get 16g of sat.)
  • Thoroughly mix the blueberries and salt. You can slightly crush the blueberries if you'd like.
  • Transfer the blueberry and salt mixture to the fermentation vessel. With a spatula, scrape out any remaining salt in the bowl so it's all in the fermentation vessel.
  • Cover with a fermentation weight. Close with a lid. Fermentation kits often have an airlock built into them; if you're using a regular lid, don't close it super tight so that built-up gas can escape.
  • Taste the blueberries daily until they've reached an appropriate level of fermentation for your taste (see note below); this should take three to seven days, depending on the temperature. When fermented, store the jar in the fridge. Blueberries should remain in good condition for several weeks.

Notes

I found it took four days before we felt it was fully fermented. The taste test assessment will be a bit of a trial and error because it’s difficult to know what tastes ready if you haven’t tasted it before. Even if you’re uncertain, having the blueberries ferment for a minimum of three days means there’s at least some fermentation that’s occurred, so if you put them in the fridge a little too early, you’ll still benefit from a partial fermentation.
We found that salt fermentation led to a bit of a salty-sour taste that isn’t super appealing when eating the blueberries straight (versus in yogurt or a smoothie), so our next attempt will be fermenting using a sugar brine. (Update: here it is.)
Keyword Blueberries, Fermented Fruit