10-Minute Sour Cherry Bam!

By damooses

Ingredients

• INGREDIENTS
• 2 lbs sour cherries, rinsed, stemmed and pitted (save the pits for Julia’s cherry-pit-infused booze!)
• 1 cup sugar (organic evaporated cane juice)
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• pinch sea salt

Details

Adapted from localkitchenblog.com

Preparation

Step 1

METHODS

Combine cherries, sugar, lemon juice and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Alternatively, do what I did: combine ingredients in a glass bowl, stir, then macerate for one or more days, refrigerated, until you are ready to cook the jam. Process until cherries are well broken-down, about 1 minute. Transfer mixture to a wide-bottomed pot or skillet (I used a 14-inch wide, 6 and 3/4 quart Le Creuset Dutch oven).
Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil hard, stirring only to prevent sticking, until mixture darkens, juice thickens to a syrupy texture, and scraping a spatula across the bottom of the pot leaves a visible stripe (or to 220 degrees F), about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, transfer to a clean jar and store refrigerated.

Yields about 1 and 1/2 cups.

OPTIONS

This small-batch, ninja-style preserving method works with a number of summer fruits: the key is to keep it small, lightly sweeten, and to break up the fruit in the food processor or with a potato masher. A wide pot or skillet is essential to cook the jam quickly and to minimize caramelization of the fruit.
Iit would be easy to substitute honey, maple syrup or another local sweetener for the sugar, however these will contribute a flavor other than cherry to the finished preserve and will result in a looser set, more like a compote.
You could certainly use the juice and zest from one small lemon (I was lazy here and used bottled); juice from one lemon is usually about 1/4 cup, or 4 tbsp, so this would make the resulting bam a bit more lemony and acidic.

STORE

Refrigerated for 1 month or more. This recipe can also be canned in a boiling water bath, in jars filled to 1/2-inch, and stored in a cool, dark spot for up to 1 year.

SEASON

Early summer.

*OK, so it doesn’t really take 10 minutes because you need to stem & pit the cherries. But, for only 2 lbs, that doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes or so and the rest is a breeze. And you can break it up into two sessions, with an overnight maceration in between, to maximize garden/couch/popsicle time.