Cherry Pitting: You Have Options

At U-pick cherry orchards, my dad likes to ask the proprietors which row the pitless cherries are in (her), But until that travesty hits the grocery stores alongside seedless-and bland-watermelons, pit we must. For jam, or for any application in which the cherries can (or should) be chopped or broken down into pieces, a mechanical cherry pitter is perfectly acceptable. The Oxo cherry-and-olive pitter is pretty effective and easy to use. For preserves, in which you want the cherries to retain their shape as much as possible, however, the best tool is one that leaves only one hole in the fruit, and that would be a large regular paperclip. Unfold it so that there's a bight, or bend, at each end. Hold the large bend in your dominant hand, the cherry in your other hand, and insert the small bend into the top of the cherry. Gently lever and pull the pit out. This method works best with fresh, tender sour cherries (after you have a quarter pound of cherries under your belt it'll become second nature, and will likely be faster than the Oxo); it works somewhat less well with very firm sweet cherries that have been refrigerated.