A paperclip to pit cherries when you have a bucket of cherries and only one pitter. Or, stick a hairpin in a cork and grasp the cork to pit the cherries, as a market farmer told me this week.
(Did you know you can make fantastic fruit cobbler in your crockpot?? Perfect way to eat summer fruit and not heat up the kitchen. My family likes 2/3 cup sugar to 4 cups sour cherries in a dessert. It's useful to know this when you're making a cobbler that has options for several kinds of fruit.)
A binder clip to hold a recipe card.
And a pushpin to make a tiny hole in the end of a very fresh egg before boiling. Such a simple thing makes a new egg a cinch to peel (the older the egg, the easier it is to peel after hardboiling). Rebecca spotted this tip on SouleMama.
Such clever things to know ; ) I know I always use my oldest eggs for boiling...and I've never even pitted cherries before!
ReplyDeletethanks for these nifty tips!
ReplyDeleteI love making cherry preserves but I hate pitting them (always have done it with my fingers in the past). Who knew... a paper clip?! I'm going to try it.
ReplyDeleteI can use the pin on the egg tip! I am forever destorying the egg shell along with the egg.
ReplyDeleteHow do you use the paperclip on the cherry?
ReplyDeleteI have never pitted a cherry in my life. I eat them fresh and in an undignified way - I spit out the pits.
ReplyDeleteMeghan, stick the paperclip right into the cherry at the stem end. Catch the pit in metal paperclip loop and pull it back out. A commercial pitter punches the pit out the bottom of the cherry, making 2 holes (by way of comparison and clarification).
ReplyDeleteDB, do you really eat sour cherries straight? We eat sweet cherries and spit the pits - most notably at the beach and bury them in the sand!
No, no. Just sweet cherries. And, yeah, they are a favorite beach food. :)
ReplyDeleteI am definitely going to try the egg trick you mentioned. No matter how long I let my eggs sit, I usually have trouble peeling them. My mom used to do that, but she said it was to keep the eggs from cracking while they cooked!
ReplyDeleteI pitted 20+ pounds of cherries Sunday night. With my hands (well, and Matt's hands too!). Oh it was a sticky, gooey, tasty mess! I am going picking some more this evening and shall try this paperclip pitting method. Perhaps I won't be quite so darn sticky at the end! Thanks for such a timely post.
ReplyDeleteBLD, that is a serious amount of cherries! Not sure the paperclip will help to make it less sticky. My kids seriously ratchet up the sticky factor, if that makes you feel better - that you're not working with littles who put their sticky hands all over you and furniture and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteWow! I love all these hints! Especially the one about the egg! I always sit back a dozen of eggs in the back of the fridge for hard boiling.
ReplyDeleteGina