September 25, 2026 Post by : Editorial Seasonal Recipes

Cherry season is cruelly short. For a few weeks in early summer, the markets and farm stands overflow with dark, glossy fruit, and then, almost overnight, they're gone, replaced by peaches and plums and the long stretch of late summer. If you love cherries, you learn to pay attention. You learn to buy more than you think you need, and you learn to have a plan.

This is my seasonal playbook for cherry season, built over years of overbuying at the farmers market and then scrambling to use everything before it turned. It's less a set of recipes than a set of ideas, flexible enough to fit whatever kind of cherries you find and however much time you have.

Sweet vs. Sour: Know What You're Working With

Sweet cherries, the kind you eat out of hand, are best for eating fresh, adding to salads, and folding into desserts where their natural sugar can shine. Sour cherries, also called tart cherries, are tarter and softer, and they're the ones you want for pies, jams, and anything that benefits from a little acidity. If you can find sour cherries at a farm stand, buy them without hesitation. They're increasingly rare, and they make the best preserves.

For sweet cherries, my favorite low-effort move is a simple cherry and goat cheese salad. Halve and pit a couple of handfuls, toss them with arugula, toasted almonds, and a lemon vinaigrette, then crumble goat cheese over the top. It takes ten minutes and tastes like the best kind of summer lunch.

Sour cherries, on the other hand, want to be cooked. A simple stovetop jam is one of the most rewarding things you can make. Simmer pitted sour cherries with sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of salt until the mixture thickens and coats a spoon. Jar it, and you'll have a taste of June in the middle of January.

Preserving the Season for Later

If you find yourself with more cherries than you can eat, freezing is the easiest way to hold onto them. Sweet cherries freeze beautifully whole, pitted or not. Spread them on a sheet pan, freeze until solid, then transfer to bags. They'll keep for months and are perfect for smoothies, crisps, and cold-weather baking.

Sour cherries freeze well too, though I usually pit them first since their pits are harder to remove once frozen. I freeze them in two-cup portions, which is exactly the amount most pie and cobbler recipes call for. There's something deeply satisfying about pulling a bag of summer cherries out of the freezer in December and baking a pie while the snow falls outside.

Beyond freezing and jam, there are a few other projects worth trying if you have the time. Cherry shrub, a sweet-tart drinking vinegar, is surprisingly easy and makes an excellent cocktail mixer or soda base. Dried cherries are lovely in granola and trail mix, though they take a while in a low oven. And cherry liqueur, made by steeping cherries in vodka or brandy with sugar, is the kind of thing that feels fancy but takes almost no effort. Just combine, shake occasionally, and wait a few weeks.

The thing about cherry season is that it asks you to be present. You can't procrastinate. The fruit won't wait. And maybe that's the gift of it. For a few weeks each year, we get to live a little more seasonally, a little more attentively, a little more aware of what's ripe and what's passing. The cherries will be gone soon. Best to enjoy them while they're here.

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