Absolutely yes. Just like other types of cherries, you can freeze Rainier cherries for longer use. They can be safe in freezer for 6 months, or even up to 12 months if they are properly kept in deep freezer.
Types of cherries and why should you freeze them?
Common types of cherries
Bing Cherries: These are juicy, sweet and firm cherries which can be found in both fresh, canned and frozen form. They provide not only a good source of iron, calcium, vitamin A and C, boron and potassium but also be rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory substances. With delicious taste, they are an excellent choice to any dessert.
Rainier Cherries: They have a creamy yellow to medium yellow-orange color and caramel-like taste. Because of short growing season, they can be rather expensive. People love eating them fresh but freezing is also a method to preserve them for later use.
Chelan Cherries: They are known as black cherries. On the outside, they look like Bing cherries, but have a milder taste.
Montmorency Cherries: Montmorency cherries are sour and often be found in frozen or canned, rather than fresh. People use them to make classic sour cherry pies or tart cherry juice.
English Morello Cherries: These are also a popular type but sour cherry that is usually used for making light syrup.
Why should you freeze cherries?
Fresh cherries are one of the most delicious fruits, providing a variety of vitamins for humans. Because it is a seasonal fruit, if not stored properly you can only eat it for a short time and it will quickly spoil.
Among many types of cherries, Rainier cherries are most favorite ones. If you want to keep the Rainier cherries’ sweet and cool taste for a long time, you can freeze them. What you need to do is putting them in a freezer. Very easy, isn’t it? Fresh frozen cherries will still retain their flavor and deliciousness even after leaving the freezer.
Further reading: What Are the Best Cheap Freezers for Home Use?
Cherries’ health benefit
The cherry is a delicious and juicy fruit. Usually, users love to eat this fruit not only because of its taste but also because of the nutrition and benefits it brings. So what benefits does it include:
Strong antioxidant: Cherries contain isoquercitrin, quercetin, and vitamin C to help reduce cell oxidation, thereby slowing down the aging process.
Anti-cancer and other degeneral diseases: The anti-cancer ability is also a notable benefit of cherries. Thanks to their fiber, vitamin C, carotenoid, and anthocyanin content, cherries have been shown to inhibit cancer cells. In addition, flavonoids may also help prevent cancer.
Prevention and reduction of back and joint diseases: Many studies prove that eating cherries regularly helps to prevent arthritis and gout. Efficiency is in the 20-50% range.
Support high blood pressure: The amount of potassium in cherries helps regulate blood pressure and aids in improving blood vessel health.
These benefits are great, but the cherry season is short. Freezing cherries properly will help you use them longer.
Why are Rainier cherries so good and special?
Rainier cherries originated from Washington State, now they are grown mostly in California and Oregon. They have unique taste with thin yellow skin, tender sweet yellow flesh.
They are low at acidity level and sweeter than dark sweet cherries. Besides, its growing season is shorter than other types of cherries, so they are pricey.
Research has shown that eating Rainier cherries can help people prevent heart disease and cancer. These health benefits can be explained as cherries have lots of antioxidant compounds.
Do Rainier cherries freeze well?
Similar to other types of cherries, Rainier cherries can last about 6 months in freezer or up to 1 year in a deep freezer.
Rainier cherries can be easily oxidized and become brown in color when they are cut and exposed to the air. Therefore, before freezing Rainier cherries, you should soak them in a mixture consisting of water and lemon juice in 10 minutes.
When freezing Rainier cherries, you should apply some techniques to have better results.
Follow along to learn how to best freeze fresh cherries. Let’s save the sweet taste of Summer.
You may also like: Best Containers for Freezing Food
Do you want to keep the taste of Summer for Fall?
The famous saying “all good things must come to an end” will be very relevant to cherry lovers as the season of this fruit comes to an end each year.
Normally, cherry season will start around May and end in August. During the Summer time, it is often said that cherries have the taste of Summer.
At the time when the fruit season is coming to an end, many people often wonder how to preserve its flavor until Autumn, because for them, 3 months is not enough to enjoy this delicious fruit.
During the off-season, the best way for you to continue enjoying this fruit is to preserve it from the last days of Summer. There are many methods to preserve cherries, the easiest way is to freeze them. This is a quick but still way to help cherries retain their nutrients and inherent flavor.
How to choose the best ones to freeze?
To preserve a delicious and long-lasting cherry, the first thing you must do is choose healthy and fresh cherries.
Pay attention to the size of the cherries you plan to store. The big fruits are the ones you should choose. So during the season, pay attention to choose large and watery fruits.
The color of the cherries is also important. Make sure your cherries are deep red (or bright pinkish yellow) and shiny.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that looks don’t matter, if you neglect it, it will be very difficult for you to get delicious frozen cherries.
The rule to remember: The bigger the cherry and the darker the color, the sweeter and more delicious it will be.
Two common ways to freeze Rainier cherries
Just like other types of cherries, steps and methods for freezing Rainier cherries are the same.
1. The easiest way: Storing in bags
For this method, you only need a few steps to freeze the cherries for long-term use.
Step 1: Rinse the cherry and pat it dry with a paper towel gently.
Step 2: Put them on a tray and put them in the freezer for 5-6 hours.
Step 3: Take them out and put them in a zip bag. Then store in the freezer for storage.
This way you can take them out of the freezer and eat them at any time. However, it should be noted that they will be very hard and cold. Especially for children, it is not advisable to immediately eat frozen cherries. Instead, you can make smoothies or drinks for easy use.
2. Syrup way
This is the method you need to prepare your cherries before freezing. For this method you will need a plastic container with a lid that is the right size for the number of cherries and the size of your freezer. We’re going to create a delicious and long-lasting cherry syrup.
Let’s follow ratio 1.4. You can adjust the sugar level to suit your taste. We recommend using less sugar because the original cherries are already sweet.
The specific steps are:
Step 1: Wash the cherries and pat dry gently.
Step 2: Measure water into a pot and add sugar in ratio 1.4. When it boils, add the cherries and continue until it boils. Turn off the stove. Let it cool.
Step 3: Gently scoop the product in the pot into the box, let it cool to room temperature and put it in the freezer to store.
You can then eat cherry syrup any time you want.
Tips for freezing cherries
- You should pay special attention to the selection of cherries for freezing
- You need to remove poor quality fruits such as the ones that are bruised, damaged
- The cherries need to be patted dry after washing to prevent waterlogging
- After thawing, you can process it or eat it with other foods to increase the taste
To conclude
You can freeze Rainier cherries for later use. Like other types of cherries, they can be kept for a long time in freezer and will not change their taste and nutrition. You need to choose the deep red and shiny rainier cherries for freezing; soak them in a mixture of water and lemon juice for a while to prevent the cherries from oxidizing. Also, you should store Rainier cherries properly so that you can keep the fruit you like for a long time.
Reference:
- How to Freeze Fresh Cherries, hockadayorchards.com, Retrieved on Jan. 6, 2022
- Freeze Fresh Cherries, thespruceeats.com, Retrieved on Jan. 5, 2022
