teaberryblue | Recipe: Pickled Sour Cherries (Reply)

My mom doesn’t like cherries.

Well, that’s not completely true. I’ll amend the statement: my mom doesn’t like maraschino cherries. The nearly-fluorescent syrupy sweet things that barely resemble anything that could have ever grown on a tree.

When I was a kid, this was a pretty sweet deal. Ice cream sundaes? I got the cherry. You know, unless my brother got it. But there was a one in two chance I was getting an extra cherry.

Then I got older, and less excited about cherries, and more excited about boozey things that cherries go in.

So, around November of last year, I started experimenting with making cherries my mom would actually like.

Here’s the resulting recipe.

Pickled Sour Cherries

Recipe Type: Condiment

Author: Tea

Prep time: 45 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Total time: 1 hour 25 mins

Delicious pickled sour cherries made with sherry

Ingredients

1/2 cup sherry vinegar
1/2 cup sweet sherry
1 stick cinnamon
1 Tb whole peppercorns
2 pods black cardamom
1/2 cup unrefined sugar
1 1/2 cups dried pitted sour cherries

Instructions

Put vinegar, sherry, cinnamon, peppercorns, and cardamom in a small saucepan
Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to medium
Add sugar, stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved
Add cherries. Cook at medium heat for five minutes, then reduce heat to low
Cook over low heat for 30 minutes, until liquid has become thick and syrupy and cherries are partially reconstituted.

Notes

You can replace the sherry with other liquor, like whiskey, brandy, port, or rum.
Cherries will keep in the fridge for a long time. You can also jar them in sealed jars like other pickles.