Cherries

Cherries keep about a week refrigerated and lose quality fast at room temperature — they are one of the fruits most worth getting into the fridge immediately.

Store them unwashed, in a shallow ventilated container or their original bag, in the coldest part of the crisper. Cherries are exceptionally sensitive to temperature: research on postharvest handling consistently shows they deteriorate several times faster at 50°F than at 32°F.

Leave the stems on. A cherry with its stem intact keeps considerably longer than one without, since the stem scar is an open wound in a high-moisture fruit.

Do not wash until you are ready to eat them.

Cherries freeze well for 8–12 months, pitted, spread on a tray then bagged.

Cherries are high in sugar, high in moisture, and thin-skinned, which is a combination that spoils quickly once the fruit is off the tree.

They also have an unusually high respiration rate — they continue metabolizing rapidly after harvest, consuming their own sugars and generating heat. That rate roughly doubles for every 18°F increase in temperature, which is why cold storage matters more for cherries than for most fruit and why they are shipped under refrigeration from the orchard.

Unlike peaches and pears, cherries are non-climacteric: they do not ripen after picking. What you buy is as good as it will ever be, and every day afterwards is decline. There is no point leaving them on the counter to improve.

The stems are the best freshness indicator. Fresh cherries have green, pliable stems; brown, dry, brittle stems mean the fruit has been stored a while, even if the cherries themselves still look glossy.

Failure shows as soft, wrinkled fruit, brown pitting on the skin, mold at the stem end, and a fermented alcoholic smell. Split skins — often from rain before harvest — are entry points for rot and those cherries should be used first or discarded.