Canning Cherries

Step 1.  Why do this?
Some do it for purely economic reasons - to save money.  Great!  Others want that sublime pleasure of opening a jar of cling peaches in the dead of winter...makes springtime seem very near.
I do it to honor my mother's memory.  She taught all her kids to can every fruit we grew on the farm as soon as we could hold the peach pitter or canning knife without doing bodily harm.  (It was also free labor.)
I also do it because I want white sugar out of my system.  I'm experimenting with the bounty of the farm in fairly new ways from how traditional canning books suggest.  You can eat healthfully and enjoy great taste.

Step 2.  What tools?
As with all work, some tools are just plain necessary.  But innovation and invention play a big part in making work pleasurable too.  When canning cherries, you don't need pectin and you don't need a cherry pitter.  It's fun to spit out the pits while eating canned cherries.  And if you leave the pits in the cherries while canning, it'll only take you several hours, not several days, to get the canning done.

You do need a few tubs for washing the fruit, a canning pot, sterilized jars and lids, a funnel for getting the cherries into the jars without losing half of them on the ground, a ladle, a light syrup (or water with stevia - I use 16 tsp stevia to 16 cups water - it's not much but have you ever considered that ripe fruit should not need a lot of sweetener?), and of course, cherries!   I also use 1/8 cup of fresh meyer lemon juice per jar to stablize the color. 

It also helps to have a stove with burners that can hold the diameter of a canning pot.  I am grateful for our 1950's era Frigidaire stove that sits in the basement.  After 40+ years of canning, it still out-performs fancy noncommercial stoves.  For one thing, the burners are big enough to hold a canning pot.  Attention stove manufacturers:  bring back larger burners!  Non-canners will appreciate them too for better wok stir-frying, etc. 

Step 3.  The fruit
We're small farmers in Northern California who grow organic cherries (and other fruits and nuts).  We grow bing and ranier and what we don't eat or can, we truck to the Bay Area and sell at San Francisco farmers' markets.  The cherries are ripe in May/June. 
Each year, I pick about 60 pounds of cherries the night before canning them.  This will yield about 42 quarts, with a small bowl left over for eating fresh.  I can  solo and start to finish (sterilizing the jars to washing the final pot) takes about 9 hours, with 10 min. for lunch, if I'm even hungry after eating all those cherries.  Get a good night's sleep the night before starting something like this.

Step 4.  Production Central
Most folks will be doing this in the kitchen.  Unless you have air conditioning, start early in the day.  The stove heat and the sweat equity will affirm why, fairly early on.  I again am blessed to have 3 areas for doing this work: 

1/outside - where I wash and select the fruit (just pick out those cherries that are split - don't use those)
2/the main kitchen where the fruit is loaded into hot, sterilized jars.  I load jars to the dishwasher to sterilize and leave the door closed, pulling out just 7 jars at a time to load and can
3/the basement kitchen, which is the former main kitchen that our dad brilliantly decided to relocate to the basement when he remodeled the main kitchen in the 1970's.  The basement, which is always cool and has a cement floor and walls, is where all the canning processing takes place.  This is where that 1950's Frigidaire stove (also relocated from the main kitchen) resides.

Step 5.  Digging In.
Sort the fruit (don't use over-ripe fruit or split fruit), stem them, and plop them into tubs of water with a bit of fruit preservative (e.g., Fruit Fresh). 

Repeat this several hundred times.  This is where you put on a CD of Vivaldi - something allegretto or vivace is best because it makes the experience hugely more pleasant.  

Juice should not be spurting out of the fruit and staining your hands.  Over-ripe cherries are not a good choice for canning.  I separate out over-ripe fruit into a spaghetti pot and stew them with a bit of tapioca and stevia and water.  I pour the results into pudding glasses for an elegant dessert with a dollop of creme fraiche.

With split fruit, check for mold in the cracks.  Rain late in the season can cause that.  Throw those cherries out.  If there is no mold, the fruits are just as tasty as their more glamorous perfect kin, but should be saved for the fruit bowl.  Here is where beauty matters.  if you're spending all this time and effort and cost, you should be canning the best looking fruit.

Somewhere along the way, you will be saying "one for me, one for the tub."  It happens every year.  Just be aware to have the right medicine on hand if you end up with a stomachache.

Step 6.  The canning pot / loading the jars
The canning pot should be filled with water to the point where, when the jars are lowered into it, the water just covers the tops of the jar lids.  At this point in the process, the water should be simmering on a low boil. 

The lids should be simmering in a separate pot in order to moisten the seals on the lids. 

16 cups of fresh, pure water should be on a low boil in a third pot.

Now, put on rubber gloves. My canning pot holds 7 quart jars in the jar holder so I remove just 7 hot, sterilized jars from the dishwasher.  Work fast now so the jars stay hot. Strain the cherries from the tub and using the funnel, fill each jar.  Bang each jar gently on the table to settle the fruit so you can add more.  Gently pack the fruit - you don't want to squish it, but you also don't want it packed to lightly that it floats in the jar post-processing.  Leave 1" of room at the top of each jar. 

Add 1/8th cup of lemon juice to each jar.  I use fresh, thawed meyer lemon juice from our late brother Rocky's wonderful old tree in his backyard.  Strain the juice if you'd like a clearer juice, before adding to the jars.  Put each jar into the jar holder that comes with the canning pot and suspend the holder handles on the side of the pot.  This will allow the jars to reheat before you lower them into the water.  If you put cold jars into very hot water, they will possibly break.   Now turn the canning pot heat to high. 

Add 16 tsp. of stevia at this point to the pot holding the 16 cups of boiling water. 

Immediately fill each jar with the stevia water mix. 

Run a table knife along the edges of the jar to release air bubbles, but be sure not to cut through the fruit!

After each bottle is filled, wipe the rim with a clean, damp cloth to ensure a good seal. 

Put a lid from the simmering pot onto a canning ring and tighten both on the jar. 

Put this jar back into the jar holder and work your way around the pot until each jar is filled and sealed.  (Note: for each batch of 7 jars, I start with a fresh pot of 16 cups of water.  I don't like left-over stevia to simmer while I prepare the next batch of jars.  Remember to add the stevia to the boiling water just before ladling the water into the jars.)

Step 7:  Processing

Now lower the jar holder into the pot and assure that the water completely covers the jar lids. 

The water may stop boiling for a few minutes.  As soon as it resumes boiling, process the fruit for 20 min. 

Step 8:  Sealing / Storing

Put your gloves back on and gently lift the jar holder up out of the water and suspend it on the pot by its handles.  Remove the jars to a clean cloth-covered or paper-bag covered surface to cool. 

I like to write the year on each lid with a crayon while the jars are still hot. 

Listen over the course of the day for pops, which means another jar has sealed.  If a jar doesn't seal in a few hours, I simply push down on the lid and sometimes, with that little bit of help, I'll hear it seal and pop.  Note: if the jar does not seal, you'll either need to store it in the refrigerator and use it up within a week, or re-process it with a new lid.  Note that this latter approach may result in over-cooked fruit. 

Once the jars are cool, store them in a pantry area that is away from light. 

Canned cherries are good for a few years, in case it takes you that long to recover and try this again!