How to Buy and Store Cherries Like a Pro

It's cherry season, people. Here's everything you need to know to make the most of it.
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This year's International Cherry Pit-Spitting Championship took place on July 1 in Eau Claire, Michigan, as it has every year since 1974, with one Rick “Pellet Gun” Krause emerging victorious for a record 16th time. He spit the pit 48 feet, 2 1/4 inches.

Not that Michiganders have all the fun (though they do have nearly all the sour cherries). Though not all of our home states have active pit-spitting competition communities, there are cherry lovers all over the country who engage in some serious cherry-eating, pie-baking, and jam-making each year during cherry season.

But the weeks, and the cherries, are going quickly, more so this summer than ever. So read on and then, by all means, cherry-pick.

Two cherry types

Sweet cherries are what you buy by the bagful and eat out of hand. Sour or tart cherries are true to their name, and the majority of them—99 percent, according to the Cherry Marketing Institute—end up dried, juiced, or, arguably the best application, baked into cherry pie.

The red states

Washington grows the most sweet cherries of any state: 237,000 tons in 2014 alone, according to the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, with Oregon, California, and other Northwestern states filling in the rest.

Michigan has a lock on sour cherries, producing about 75 percent of the U.S. crop. The other sour cherry–growing pockets are in New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

An early start

Sour cherry season, July into August, is short—too short, some might say.

Sweet cherry season is a little longer and goes in waves. California’s season comes first, producing the ones you see at supermarkets starting around May. As that supply peters out in June, sweet cherries from the Northwest start coming in. Typically, they’re abundant through August.

But this hasn’t been a typical year. “This was the earliest start ever to cherry season,” says James Michael, vice president of marketing for Northwest Cherry Growers, which represents growers in Washington and the other sweet cherry states. Michael says an abrupt transition from winter to spring caused the cherries to ripen a month early, which means the fruit is going to get scarcer sooner rather than later.

Cherry varieties:

Bing is by far the predominant sweet cherry. It’s firm, dark red, sweet, and juicy—a textbook cherry. Soon, the cherries you buy at the store will be a mix of other later-season varieties, says Michael. These include Skeena, a large, nearly black cherry; Lapin, which is quite firm and sweet; and the heart-shaped Sweetheart.

Rainier cherries, a fleeting mid-season variety, have distinct pink-tinged yellow skins and very sweet, yellow-colored flesh. Find them now, but not for much longer, at farmers' markets and grocery stores.

Montmorency is the most common of the sour cherries. It’s bright red like a Twizzler, softer, and more tender-skinned than any of the sweet cherries.

Remember: only a tiny fraction of sour cherries are sold fresh. The rest are turned into juice and other products. So if you see fresh Montmorency cherries, snap them up.

Add sweet Rainier cherries to an arugula salad or simmer tart Montmorencys into a sauce for pork tenderloin.

Ellen Silverman

Look at the stem.

The stem on a cherry is like the eyes on a fish, says Michael. You can tell how fresh it is by looking at it. An intact green stem bodes well.

“We pick with the stem on. That helps them hold. Otherwise, the hole where the stem was can rot quicker," says farmer Peter Klein of Seedling Fruit in South Haven, Michigan.

But that doesn’t mean cherries missing their stems are no good. Check the fruit. It should look shiny and feel firm and plump, not wrinkly or bruised. Keep in mind that sour cherries are naturally softer than sweet ones, and that cherries at the farmers' market tend to be hand-picked and more fragile than commercially grown ones.

How to store cherries:

Cherries like it cold. “They lose more quality in an hour at room temperature than they do all day at refrigerator temperature,” says Michael.

So put them in the fridge, unwashed, and keep them dry. If you have room, Klein suggests storing them in layers between paper towels.

Cherries will keep well for at least a week in the fridge. They freeze well, too. Rinse, pat dry, and freeze them in airtight plastic bags. You can do this keeping the stems and pits intact, but you might find it more convenient later on if you pit them first. And hey, think of the fun you could have spitting all of those leftover pits.