Do you need a family project? Can some cherries.
Do you want cherries year round? Can some cherries.
I know what your thinking, canning, who would want to do that. Since when was: boiling water, sharp knives, raw food, mold, and little kids, a good combination. Well, if you do it properly, no one will get hurt, no one is going to be poisoned, and everyone will have unforgettable memories. Oh, did I mention you don’t need sharp knives for canning cherries, you just need a cherry pitter, it is much safer and easier.
Like most things canning cherries requires you to assemble the needed tools and/or products. First, you need cherries. Then you need the pitter, stock pots, canning jars of various sizes, lids for those jars, and a canner.
To limit the chaos we used several workstations, each station had a different job.
First, came the sorting, having to decide which cherries to keep or toss, this was followed by washing the good cherries.
Which was followed by the plucking of the stems.
Then came the pitting.
Once the cherries were pitted they were put into jars and had a sugar water mixture poured on top.
This was followed by the process removing of air bubbles, wiping the edge of jar.
Then we place a lid on the jar and tighten it with a band,
Once we had filled 6-8 jars were full we moved them to the canner. Once the jars were in the canner the water was brought to a boil. The jars would sit for 25 minutes in the boiling water.
Once their time was finished, the hot jars were carefully extracted and place on the counter.
After the water cooled off, the next set of jars went in. If you did not let the water cool-down the hot water would break the jars with insertion. After all the jars had been canned, we had 35 jars of Bing cherries, and 12 jars of Rainier cherries, not to mention the gaining of family memories.