How to Pit Cherries Without a Cherry Pitter

Here in Greece, we’re in the middle of cherry season! I love going to the open market and buying a big bag of just-picked beautiful cherries. My little ones love to sit around a bowl-full of them and eat and eat.

After a few days though, I try to do something different with the abundance of whatever-fruit-is-in-season that we have. Since that fruit is cherries right now, that means I need to pit cherries. That can be a dreaded task, but it doesn’t have to be! It took just a few minutes in the kitchen to get through a whole bag of them to turn into cherry compote. It was so easy to pit the cherries that, after a couple of minutes, I turned the job over to my 7-year-old who thoroughly enjoyed her new job. 😉

After we pit cherries and have eaten our fill ;-), we love to make THIS CHERRY COMPOTE because there are so many foods we can enjoy with it!

The Easy Way to Pit Cherries Without a Cherry Pitter

Here’s How:

First, get a straw. Those nice strong ones from a cold-cup-tumbler work really well!

Push the straw from the bottom of the cherry up through toward the stem. You’ll feel the straw hit the pit and you’ll just push it right out with the stem.

I do this over the sink, but if you had a bottle with a very small top (like those old glass Coca-Cola bottles) that the cherries couldn’t fit through, that would work, too. Don’t worry if you don’t — I don’t have any bottle with an opening that small, so I’ve worked over the sink and it’s been perfect.