Semi-Success: Boiling Water Bath Preserved Brandied Cherries

Friday, August 22, 2014

This recipe from MorselsAndSauces for sweet cherries in red wine is the closest to the recipe I followed that I could find, but I used brandy instead of wine, no lemons, and slightly fewer cherries.

A mistake I seem to be making over and over, I made once again. Don't be afraid to really pack the produce in there for raw processing. The hot syrup/brine + bath processing has a tendency to really help the produce shrink. If you don't jam them in there, you run out of syrup fast and end up with half-filled jars. So, pack them tightly. Tighter than you feel comfortable with.

Also, when I took the first few jars out of the water bath, the syrup inside the jar boiled up so fast and spattered everywhere. I've now also learned to let these jars cool a bit in the hot water before removing them to cool. Remove the canner from heat, and wait 5 minutes. Lesson learned.


[Edit 4/27/15: This recipe takes all the joy out of eating cherries and replaces it with brandy. Maybe too much brandy? Dunno.]