Home Canned Cherry Pie Filling
The Cherry Season generally lasts from the first week of June until the end of August. Cherries are one of the freshest produce items available. Many people consider Cherries hard to can because of all the effort it takes to pit the cherries, but I disagree. The effort is well rewarded when you taste your own home-canned cherries.
My favorite way to can cherries is to make Cherry Pie Filling (continue reading below) and to Juice the Cherries for the freshest and best juice around.
The Cherry Pie Filling is amazing because one quart of that is not only good for make pie and cherry crisp, but it is also good for Cherry Bread, Cherry Chicken, Cherry Crescents and oh so many more yummy things.
Most people think that you can not can Cherries, but I am here to tell you that they are all wrong. We were in a lucky situation to be able to get all of the free cherry’s that we could pick ourselves. We loaded into the truck, buckets in hand and headed out to pick. 3 hours later we had about 50 gallons of Cherries. We will be giving a bunch of them away, but with the others we are making Cherry Pie/Crisp Filling.
Not just cherry pie and cherry crisp, I am also going to show you some recipes for cherry filling bread, cherry chicken and how we marinade a roast. YUMMMMMMM!
But first for the filling recipe and video of how to can it.
Ingredients:
* 3 1/2 quarts water
* 4 1/2 cups sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 1/2 cups Clear Jel (this is very hard to find in stores but we have added it to our convenience store)
* 1 quart water
* 3/4 cup jell-o cherry gelatin (powder)
* 2 1/2 cups Karo syrup
* 1 (1/4 ounce) package cherry Kool-Aid
* 14 cups sour cherries
Directions:
- Bring first 3 ingredients to boiling point.
- Mix Clear Jell and the 1 quart water together. Add to the near boiling ingredients in 8-quart kettle.
- Bring again to boiling point.
- Remove from heat and add Karo syrup.
- Mix Jello and Kool-Aid together and add to kettle.
- Put cherries in last.
- Ladle the mixture into 7 quart hot, sterile jars.
- Leave 1/2 inch headspace.
- Seal the jars.
- Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
- Remove from water bath and place on kitchen towels on counter top to cool.
- When you’re sure the jar is sealed, tighten the rings.
- Make sure the rim is clean before putting the lid on and reprocess.
- Or you could pour the pie filling into a freezer container and put in your freezer and use first.
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The Ready Store
Thank you for your recipe. The word ‘cherries’ , the plural word meaning more than one cherry, is spelled c-h-e-r-r-i-e-s, not cherry’s. The use of the apostrophe s (‘s) is for the posessive form, in other words, ” The cherry’s stem was rotten” meaning the stem, belonging to the cherry, was rotten.
Thank you so much, I will make the changes now.
We recently made several batches of this cherry pie filling & it is a HIT at our house! It tastes better than any commercial canned filling and we will make it every year from now on.
We had excellent results using cornstarch because Clear Jel is unavailable in our area.
We served it over vanilla ice cream and everyone asked for seconds
You are doing a fantastic job with your new site – keep up the good work!
I am so glad that it was a hit.
I am glad you tried it with cornstarch and had good results. That will be useful information for other users on this site. Did you substitute the amount 1/1 in the recipe or is there a difference in the substitution.
I wish you many more happy Cherry Desserts.
Yes, I used the same amount of cornstarch – it is beautiful in jars as well as being so delicious. My pantry is a sight to behold after the bumper crops of the 2009 growing season
I’ve switched gears for fall & pulled out my quilting & crocheting now as I enjoy a slower pace for a few months.
February will start my 2010 garden season when I start my flower & garden seeds indoors.
Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving and a blessed Christmas – we’ll think of you as we enjoy wonderful cherry pies with our family!
Is clear gel the same as sure gel?
No it is not. Clear Jel is a thickener sort of like corn starch, whereas Sure Gel is a fruit pectin used for jams and jellies.