Is it possible to freeze sweet cherries for winter with pits?

In winter, you can buy any berries in the supermarket, but they have few vitamins. Try to freeze cherries for the winter, and you will get a healthy and delicious dessert. An additional plus - savings: in season, the price of berries is lower at times. So why overpay?

Pick berries

First you need to choose the right sweet cherry. It is better to buy it at the farmers market: there the berries are fresher. In supermarkets, cherries usually lie in storage boxes for a long time and during this time lose a lot of vitamins. In addition, the fruits are treated with chemicals for better preservation, but this is not good for health.

When choosing a cherry, be sure to try a couple of berries. Fruits should be dense, not watery. The taste is bright, full, pronouncedly sweet with a slight sourness. But the color of the berries can be anything - yellow, and pink, and dark red.

Try to freeze berries of different colors - in winter such an assortment looks very appetizing. In addition, you will have a choice. In cherry-lemon confiture, yellow berries look better, and in compote, filling - red.

Fruit preparation

Sort out the cherries. Remove any crumpled, cracked berries, those with rot. Tear off the petioles.

If you find worms in some fruits, don't be discouraged. They can be removed without picking berries one thing at a time. For this:

1. Dissolve 500 g of salt in a liter of water at room temperature.
2. Dip the berries in salt water.
3. Wait 30 minutes.

During this time, the pests themselves crawl out of the fruit. You just have to thoroughly rinse the cherries. Do not worry, such fruits will not harm your health. In a sense, this is even a plus - you know for sure that you bought environmentally friendly sweet cherries “without chemistry”.

Then dry the berries. Spread them in a thin layer on a towel or paper towel and wait until the fruits are completely dry. The water remaining on the skin will turn into ice, and additional frost in conservation is not needed.

The classic way to freeze

Freezing fruits with a bone is very simple. Spread the prepared sweet cherry in 1 layer on any flat surface. A small tray, a sheet for baking, a plate for cutting vegetables is suitable. The main thing is that the item is placed in the freezer. Leave the fruits there for 2-3 hours (most refrigerators have time to freeze the fruits during this time).

Then remove the cherries and pour them into a bag or container. Pour the next portion onto the pallet and repeat the procedure.

So you get neat, not taken fruits that are convenient to store and use. You can put them in the filling, in compotes, and for decorating the dessert. You can just defrost the berries and serve as a dessert - after defrosting, the cherries with pits look almost like fresh.

Some advise using vacuum cleaners - lay the berries in portions in bags, pump out the air and freeze immediately. So you do not spend time fussing with pallets and pouring cherries. But the berries are very tender, and the vacuum will force them to snuggle closely together. Some fruits will surely crack or rumple.

Choose for yourself. If you don’t care about the integrity of the berries, a vacuum cleaner is a great option. Otherwise, use the pallet method.

Bone-freezing berries

Such a workpiece is convenient to use in cooking. Jam, jams, pie filling will turn out to be very tasty and not too “wet” - excess juice flows out during processing. But you cannot serve such berries on the table and you cannot put them in a fruit salad. After defrosting, the fruits do not look too appetizing, although this does not affect the taste.

To properly remove the bones, use a special device - so you will damage the berries less. In extreme cases, the bones can be removed with a pin.

After preparing the fruits, arrange them in portions and freeze. Never stack the workpiece in one large container. Since the cherry will be saturated with juice, it will freeze not with single berries, but with a solid briquette. Separate from him the desired amount of workpiece will not work.

When you defrost berries, a lot of liquid will remain in the container. Do not pour it out. This is not a “production waste”, but a natural cherry juice. From it you can make fruit drinks, jelly, boil topping for ice cream or add to a cocktail.

Sweet Cherry

Prepare the cherries and seed. Wait a bit - let the excess juice drain. Then gently drain the liquid, and put the cherries in small containers, pouring each layer with sugar. For 1 kg of fruit you will need about 200 g of sugar, but focus on your own taste. This is an approximate proportion, if you change it, nothing bad will happen.

Place containers with the workpiece in the freezer. Now you have a ready-made pie filling. If desired, berries with sugar can be served as jam. The fruits will soak in sugar and become sweet, but not too sweet - not as cloying as classic jam. It is delicious to put such cherries on cookies or a hot pancake.

It is better to defrost the workpiece in the refrigerator on the top shelf. It will take about 8 hours, but the fruits will not spill and retain all the vitamins.

Cherry Puree

Peel the fruit and mash the pulp. If there is no blender, a meat grinder is also suitable - the workpiece will not be so uniform, but still tasty. If desired, you can add sugar or honey, spices, lemon juice in mashed potatoes.

Lay the sweet cherries in containers. Do not use glass jars - they can be broken by ice.

Such mashed potatoes can be given to children as an independent dessert, impregnated with them confectionery or pour ice cream. Add gelatin - you get delicious marmalade, steam until the liquid evaporates - make cherry jam.

Do not be afraid to experiment. Each recipe in this article can be modified to fit your own needs. In any case, you will get a tasty, healthy and natural dish.