Pitting cherries quickly and easily with household items and these tricks

It’s finally cherry season and we all can’t wait to enjoy this delicious fruit. But especially when you use them for jams, compotes, cakes and other delicacies where you need large quantities of the same amount, the pitting turns out to be a tiresome task. For one thing, you can use a stoner, but what if you don’t have something like that at home? The knife is also our good friend, but with it every cherry must first be cut in half, which is still the fastest and easiest method. But are there a few other tricks and tools that can help? What can you use to pit cherries? We’ve rounded up a few hacks that will make the task easier. This is how you can pit cherries without a pitter:

Core the cherries with a bottle and a straw

How can you pit cherries with a bottle? All you need is a clean glass bottle and a chopstick. Place the cherry on the bottle opening – with the hole where the stem was previously facing up. Then push the stick down through this very hole. At the same time, you also press the core down, which then falls into the bottle.

In this way you can also pit cherries with a PET bottle. The only important thing is that you use a bottle whose opening is not too large so that you can put the cherries on top without them falling through the hole. Or don’t you have a chopstick? Then you can core the cherries with a straw instead, which you use in the same way.

How about you make a cherry stone pillow yourself from the seeds you have collected?

Stone cherries with a hairpin

Another great household tip for pitting cherries is the following, for which you need a cork in addition to a hairpin. The latter provides a better grip, but can also be left out. You put both ends of the hairpin into the cork, while the loop on the other side helps to pull the stone out of the cherry. Since the cherries are quite soft and can be crushed using this method, it helps to freeze them a little in advance.

Pitting cherries – trick to pitting cherries with a paper clip

Another household tip for pitting cherries is the paper clip. Many find this trick even better than with the hairpin, some even prefer it to the cherry pitter. This is how you can easily pit cherries with a paper clip: As you know, the paper clip has two loops. Bend the inner one upwards and use the other as a handle. As with the hairpin, pierce the loop into the cherry from above so that it runs to the side of the core. Use the loop to hook the core and pull it up and out of the hole.

Find out what else you can do with paper clips in this article.

Cherries stone in the Thermomix

Yes, you can actually pit cherries with the Thermomix. So if you want to save time or just don’t feel like pitting the cherries by hand, this device is a great helper. But keep in mind that this will severely damage the fruit. If you want to decorate a cake with them, they are no longer suitable for it. If, on the other hand, they are used for jams, jams, compotes or to incorporate them into desserts, you can stone cherries with this machine – and that in a matter of seconds. It is important that you do not set the setting too high when you are pitting cherries in the Thermomix. Otherwise you risk that the kernels will also be crushed. Choose level 4 at most.

Pitting after processing

If you want to cook cherry jam, you don’t necessarily have to pit the cherries in advance. Since you don’t need the pulp in this case either, the cherries can be pitted by boiling them. Most of the kernels come off during the cooking process. Loosen the remaining ones by passing them through a coarse salad sieve with the help of a pastry card. If there is still a lot of pulp stuck on some of them, you can boil them up again and repeat the process. This leaves the fruit juice at the end, which you can process into jam as usual with a gelling agent.

With a spout

If you like to bake and decorate your desserts, you surely have a couple of spouts in the house. Perfect, because the fruit can also be pitted wonderfully with it. Put the spout in a bowl and just press the cherry on top. The core will then come out at the top and you can easily remove it. Just try out whether the task works better with a more pointed or wider nozzle. That might depend on the firmness of the fruit.

By the way, you can also pit sour cherries with the aforementioned tricks.