How To Freeze Cherries
Have you wondered how to properly freeze cherries? It’s really easy, and in reality this is a great way to not only freeze cherries but to freeze fruit as well.
As you may have heard by now, I have a few cherry trees in my back yard (not too shabby for the North Coast of British Columbia). Here’s the thing: I’m not a fan of cherries. I can’t eat them just in the form of fruit, I’m more of a strawberry and pineapple girl.
So last year I am ashamed to say that those cherries all went to waste. I picked a few, but they went bad within days. I wasn’t letting that happen again. The week the cherries were picked, we were in the middle of a heat wave. At temperatures of 34C (that’s 93F for my US readers) and no air conditioning, there was not way I was firing up the oven to do baking. I didn’t want the cherries to go to waste, so I prepped and froze them.
How To Freeze Cherries
First I picked through the cherries and stemmed them. I filled my sink full of vinegar and water and let them soak for a bit. Then I used this handy dandy cherry pitter and set them aside in a bowl lined with paper towels. I laid out all the cherries on a baking sheet and popped it in the freezer for an hour. This process is called flash freezing. Doing this first ensures that the fruit won’t stick together in a glob when you pop it in a Ziploc bag or container. Once the cherries were frozen for at least an hour, now you can transfer to the storage solution of your choice (I used freezer bags) and that’s it!
Here are some other fun things you can do with cherries:
Love that pitter! So cool! We are growing cherry trees in our backyard. They are only a year old so we didn’t get any fruit, but I’ll keep this in mind for coming years!
That pitter was my saving grace, made it go so fast. I had at least 20 pounds that I pitted (I still have some on my trees I need to get) and my in laws took two big buckets full.
Love this! Thanks for posting this! Definitely going to do this from now on!
Thanks for the tip! I LOVE cherries – they are pretty pricy in my neck of the woods to buy, so I really dont want to waste any when I do buy them 🙂
They were $6/lb not to long ago but I see Safeway has them on sale for $1.99/lb right now. Yes, I agree when you find them on sale – stock up.
My wife’s the baker in our family, and I think she’d love this 🙂 Thanks for the ever-helpful tips, as always!
Your welcome Casey!
Honestly I’ve never freezed cherries nor did I know that there was a proper way to doing so.
I found this out when I was meal prepping for when my son was about to be born. I was making potato wedges and figured it out.
I don’t think the cherries on my house last long enough to freeze. Lol. Good post. I may try this before the fall. Thanks.
I love your awesome cherry pitting tool and would love to own one! Thanks for your great step-by-step tips of how to freeze cherries–I’ve never done this before.
You’re lucky you have so many cherry trees in your backyard. Cherry’s are so expensive! This is a great post on how to store them. Thanks for sharing.
This is awesome! I must have a Cherry pitter… Thanks for this. I can’t wait to try freezing my own cherries!