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Sour cherry jam turns fresh tart cherries into a deep, ruby-red preserve with a fresh flavor that tastes like the inside of a cherry pie. Sour cherries aren’t actually sour once you cook them down with a bit of sugar, they’re just packed with more real cherry flavor than any sweet cherry on the shelf.
Table of Contents
- Notes from my Kitchen
- Ingredients for Sour Cherry Jam
- How to Make Sour Cherry Jam
- Testing for Gel Stage
- Canning Sour Cherry Jam
- Altitude Adjustments
- Yield Notes
- Storage Options
- Recipe Tips and Variations
- Ways to Use Sour Cherry Jam
- Sour Cherry Jam FAQs
- Ways to Preserve Cherries
- Sour Cherry Jam Recipe
- Jam Recipes
Sour cherries are naturally low in pectin, so this is an old-fashioned jam that gels through a long, slow cook and a little lemon juice instead of a box of pectin. It’s the same approach I use for most of my small-batch jams, and it gives you a jam with cleaner fruit flavor and a nicer texture than the pectin-set kind.
You may know sour cherries by another name. They’re also called tart cherries or pie cherries, and they almost never show up in the grocery store because they’re too soft to ship well. If you don’t grow your own, your best bet is a pick-your-own orchard in early summer or the frozen fruit section, where I’ve actually had the most luck finding them at big supermarkets rather than specialty shops.
This recipe is flexible. Cook it to a full gel, and you’ll get a thick jam that stands up on a spoon, or stop a little earlier for a softer, more spoonable set.
The one thing to know going in is that sour cherries foam like nothing else I cook. I make dozens of kinds of jam every summer and this is the one that keeps me standing right at the stove, because it’ll boil over the second you turn your back.
It’s the same patient, no-pectin method behind my raspberry jam and old-fashioned strawberry jam, just with a fruit that needs a closer eye.
Notes from my Kitchen
We grow our own tart cherries in our permaculture orchard, and every year I seem to talk myself into planting one or two more trees just to keep up with this jam. When our own trees come up short, we head down to a pick-your-own farm about twenty miles down the road and come home with a trunk full of cherries.
The first batch never makes it into the canner. It gets eaten straight off the spoon and on toast within a couple of weeks, so I just keep that one in the fridge. After that, I make more and squirrel a few jars away for winter, because nothing brings back the warmth of July like sour cherry jam in February. Some years, I put up ten pounds of cherries at a time, always one small pot at a time, and the rest of the harvest goes into home-canned cherry pie filling and a few jars of whole canned cherries.
Ingredients for Sour Cherry Jam
This is a three-ingredient jam, and the measurements all live in the recipe card down below. Here’s what each one does and what to look for.
- Sour cherries: Any tart or pie cherry works here, including Montmorency, Evans, Meteor, and Balaton. Use them fully ripe for the best flavor. Fresh and frozen cherries both work, so don’t pass this up just because cherry season is over.
- Lemon juice (fresh or bottled): The lemon brightens the cherry flavor and adds a little extra pectin to help these low-pectin cherries gel on their own. Sour cherries are already high in acid, so the lemon isn’t needed to make the jam safe for canning, it’s there for flavor and set. Feel free to use fresh lemon juice for better flavor and the extra pectin that comes with fresh fruit.
- Granulated sugar: Sugar sweetens the jam and helps it reach a firm gel. A smaller amount of sugar gives the most concentrated cherry flavor with a lower yield, while more sugar gives you a higher yield and a milder, sweeter jam.
I’ve written this recipe explicitly for sour cherries, so keep that in mind.
Sweet cherries like Bing and Rainier are a bit different, and I have separate recipes for black cherry jam and Rainier cherry jam. They’re much lower in acid and tartness, so they don’t make the same bold jam, but they’re still delicious.
If you only have a few pounds of tiny fruit and dread the pitting, a smooth, seedless cherry jelly may be the better project. The same goes for smaller, wild cherries, and they’re better suited to chokecherry jelly or pin cherry jelly, depending on the variety.
Great recipe!! I have made this two years in a row now, and love it. Not too sweet and super easy to make.
How to Make Sour Cherry Jam
The method is simple. Cook the pitted cherries down with lemon juice, add sugar, and keep cooking until the jam gels. The only real work is the pitting, and the only thing to watch is the foam.
Preparing the Cherries
Sour cherries are soft and bruise easily, so process them as soon as you can after picking. If you can’t get to them right away, get them into the freezer. Freezing is actually a handy way to pit them, since they break down a bit as they thaw, and you can pop the pits out by hand without a knife or pitter.
For fresh cherries, a sharp knife works in a pinch, but if you have more than a couple of pounds, it’s worth picking up a small handheld cherry pitter. Once you get a rhythm going, a batch will be pitted in no time.
Cooking the Jam
Put the pitted cherries in a heavy-bottomed jam pot with the lemon juice and bring them to a boil. Use a deeper pot than you think you need, because this jam foams a lot, and you do not want to fight a boil-over. Stir often and cook for about twenty minutes, until the cherries have completely fallen apart.
Add the sugar and keep cooking until the jam reaches gel stage. Cook to the gel, not to a fixed clock. On my stove, it usually takes another twenty to thirty minutes, but every stovetop and every batch of fruit is different, and the time is only a guideline.
Start testing for gel early and pull the pot off the heat the moment it sets, because no-pectin jam keeps thickening the longer it boils, and it’ll go from perfect to scorched faster than you’d expect.
Once it gels, ladle the jam into prepared jars and take your time removing air bubbles, since this thick jam traps them easily. Adjust the headspace to 1/4 inch and cap with two-part canning lids.
Testing for Gel Stage
Since there’s no added pectin, you’ll need to test the jam yourself to know when it’s done. Use either of these methods, and stop cooking the second it passes.
- Frozen plate test: Put a small plate in the freezer before you start. Spoon a little jam onto the cold plate, wait a few seconds, then push it with your finger. If it wrinkles and holds its shape instead of running, it’s ready.
- Thermometer test: Gel stage is right around 220°F at sea level. It drops about 1 degree for every 500 feet of elevation, so here at 1,000 feet, I finish my jams at about 218°F.
- Don’t go by the clock: The cook times above are just a guide. Cooking past the gel point is the number one reason this jam turns out too thick or hard, so trust the test, not the timer.
Canning Sour Cherry Jam
You don’t have to can this jam at all. A single batch is small enough that it’s easy to just keep it in the refrigerator, where it’ll last about a month. It also freezes beautifully. If you do want it shelf-stable for the pantry, it’s a quick water bath process, and if you’re new to canning, my beginner’s guide to water bath canning walks through the whole setup.
To can it, ladle the hot jam into prepared half-pint or pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. De-bubble carefully, wipe the rims, and seat your two-part lids. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes (adjusting for altitude, see below).
Then turn off the heat and let the jars rest in the canner for 5 minutes before lifting them out to cool. Once they’re cool, check that every lid has sealed, and store any unsealed jars in the fridge.
Altitude Adjustments
Adjust your water bath processing time for elevation:
- Below 6,000 feet: Process for 10 minutes
- Above 6,000 feet: Process for 15 minutes
Yield Notes
Sour cherries cook down a lot, so a finished batch always looks small next to the fruit you started with. That’s normal, and it’s exactly what gives the jam its concentrated flavor.
- About 3 pounds of whole sour cherries, roughly 5 cups once pitted, makes a single small batch of about 2 half-pint jars.
- Adding more sugar will raise the yield but mute the cherry flavor. I’d rather have a little less of a really good jam.
- Don’t double the recipe. Larger batches don’t heat evenly, take much longer to cook down, and often fail to set or scorch. Make single batches back to back instead.
Storage Options
However you finish it, here’s how long sour cherry jam will keep:
- Refrigerator: 3 to 4 weeks in a covered jar.
- Freezer: Up to 6 months in a freezer-safe container with a little headspace.
- Canned: 12 to 18 months in a cool, dark pantry once sealed.
Recipe Tips and Variations
A few things I’ve learned making this jam year after year, plus some flavor variations worth trying:
- Add a splash of bourbon. Stir a few tablespoons in near the end of cooking for a grown-up sour cherry preserve.
- Almond and cherry are classic. A few drops of almond extract added with the sugar plays beautifully off the tart fruit. Cinnamon and vanilla work too. These flavors are strong, so go with a light hand.
- Adjust the sugar to taste. Anywhere from 2 to 3 cups per batch works. Less sugar means more intense cherry flavor and a lower yield, more sugar means a sweeter, higher-yield jam.
- Use the ripest fruit you can get. Fully ripe cherries have the most flavor and the most natural pectin to help the jam set.
- The method works for other low-pectin fruit too. Once you’re comfortable cooking a jam to gel stage without a box of pectin, the same approach makes blackberry jam and old-fashioned grape jam.
- Make jelly if you hate pitting. When I just can’t pit one more cherry, I run the rest through a steam juicer and turn the juice into a smooth, seedless cherry jelly or a batch of homemade cherry wine.
Ways to Use Sour Cherry Jam
The obvious home for this jam is toast and peanut butter sandwiches, but it’s far too good to stop there. I spoon it into thumbprint cookies, swirl it through yogurt and oatmeal, and warm a little to spoon over pancakes or ice cream. It also makes a quick glaze for roast pork or duck, and a spoonful next to a sharp cheese on a board disappears fast.
Once you’ve got a few jars in the pantry, there’s no end to what you can do with them. My roundup of ways to use up a jar of jam has plenty more ideas for working through the harvest.
Sour Cherry Jam FAQs
About 3 pounds of whole sour cherries, which is roughly 5 cups once pitted, makes a single small batch of around 2 half-pint jars. Cherries cook down a lot, so the finished yield always looks small next to the fruit you started with. That concentration is exactly what gives the jam its deep cherry flavor.
Yes. Frozen sour cherries work just as well as fresh, and freezing actually makes pitting easier, since the cherries soften as they thaw and release their pits by hand. You can cook them straight from frozen if you don’t mind a slightly longer cook time while they release their juice.
That almost always means it cooked past gel stage. No-pectin jam keeps thickening the longer it boils, so going by the clock instead of the frozen-plate or thermometer test is the usual cause. Pull it off the heat the moment it gels at around 220°F, and if it’s already too stiff, reheat it gently with a splash of water to loosen it back to a spreadable jam.
A runny batch usually didn’t quite reach full gel stage, so cook it a few minutes longer and retest on a frozen plate. Doubling the recipe is the other common culprit, since a larger batch has less surface area to evaporate and rarely sets up well. You can always reheat a runny batch and cook it back up to gel stage.
It’s best not to. Larger batches don’t heat evenly, take much longer to cook down, and often fail to set or scorch on the bottom. If you have a lot of cherries, make single batches back to back instead. That’s how I put up ten pounds of cherries some years, one small pot at a time.
Ways to Preserve Cherries
Did you make this sour cherry jam? Leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ star rating on the recipe card below and tell me in the 📝 comments how your batch turned out!
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Sour Cherry Jam
Equipment
- Canning Jars, Lids, and Rings
Ingredients
- 3 lbs sour cherries
- 1 medium lemon, juiced
- 2 cups sugar, see note
Instructions
- Pit the sour cherries, removing all the pits.
- Add the pitted cherries and lemon juice to a heavy-bottomed jam pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Use a deeper pot than seems necessary, since this jam foams and boils over easily.
- Cook the cherries, stirring often to prevent boil-overs, until the fruit has completely fallen apart, about 20 minutes.
- Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. (If using pectin instead, this is the point to add it. See notes.)
- Keep cooking the jam until it reaches gel stage, testing as you go rather than watching the clock. The time varies by stove, but it usually takes another 25 to 30 minutes.
- Test for gel stage with a plate chilled in the freezer (the jam should wrinkle and hold when pushed) or with an instant-read thermometer (about 220°F at sea level, lower at higher elevations). Pull the pot off the heat the moment it gels, since the jam keeps thickening the longer it cooks.
- Ladle the hot jam into prepared jars. Remove air bubbles, wipe the rims, and adjust the headspace to 1/4 inch. Cap with two-part lids.
- For refrigerator jam, cool and store in the fridge for up to 1 month. To can, process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, then rest the jars in the canner for 5 minutes before lifting them out to cool (see altitude adjustments below). Check the seals before storing.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Sorry I made a mistake! I meant the Evans is similar to the Montmorency cherry, not the Bing. Oops.
Thanks for the recipe, but I did go the pectin route which yielded 9 1/2 jars (125 ml each) for a double batch. Perfect amount of sugar for me. I think if I did it without pectin the result would be too sweet for my taste (1 cup of sugar per jar of jam?) I make many jams including with Nanking cherries, choke cherries, saskatoons (service berry in USA) and valiant grapes. I pick all my berries wild or grow them myself. I normally save the Evans sour cherries (similar to USA Bing cherries) I grow for making liqueur and pies, but due to covid no visiting children this year so I made jam. So good I will be making this recipe every year from now on. Have you ever made your recipe with only one cup of sugar?
I have not tried it with only a cup of sugar but if you are using a low sugar/no sugar pectin then there is no reason why you couldn’t.
I’ve been making jam for years using Pomona’s pectin, a more natural pectin, but I’ve never liked the consistency of the jams produced with it. Like you, I just want to enjoy the fruit. I made this recipe today and it came out fantastically! I’m a convert to no-pectin jams now! Thank you so much!
You’re very welcome. So glad you enjoyed the recipe.
I have bush cherries. Would this work with them?
Yes it should work just fine.
Any edible fruit can be made into jam, but if your bush cherries are small with pits then you may want to consider making jelly instead of jam…saves a lot of work!
Followed the instructions but jam turned toffee like consistency-dark brown and sticky. Used pectin. Don’t know what went wrong! It’s not edible and had to throw away the pot because it’s impossible to get the mess out. Really disappointed 🙁
If it turned out dark brown it definitely got burned! Sounds like it overcooked and the sugars caramelized. Once you add the pectin, you don’t continue cooking the jam. It looks like since you added pectin I’m guessing you kept cooking it after adding the pectin? Packaged pectin cannot be cooked longer than a minute or two, it just needs to return to a boil and then go into jars. Once you add the pectin, you’re following the instructions on the pectin packet, which can vary slightly based on the brand, but pretty much all of them have you get the jam into jars right after the pectin is added.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe! I have made jam before, but this is the first time I actually canned it…and it turned out great! This small-batch recipe is a great way to get started on canning. My jam was perhaps a little bit more tart, as I just used what cherries I had picked (turned out to be about 6 cups). I also added a bit of almond extract when I added the sugar, as I love this flavor…not super noticeable, but it is delicious.
You have an awesome website here; I will definitely be back to try more of your recipes and ideas. Thank you for sharing all of these great resources!
You’re very welcome. So glad you enjoyed the recipe.
My family does not eat sugar. Can we use honey? Or just can it without the sugar? If the sugar is just for sweetener can I use some stevia plant from my garden?
Since cherries are a low pectin fruit, the sugar is used in this recipe to get a good gel. You could use stevia or honey if you use a low sugar/no sugar pectin like Pomona’s and follow their instructions.
I made this recipe and followed it exactly but it ended up hardening after it cooled. I have to warm it to get it to spread. I made it without pectin. Do you think I need to adjust the cooking time?
Yes, it sounds like it cooked too long.
Thank you for this simple yet fabulous recipe. We have a sour cherry tree on our property, and we never really knew what to do with it. This year it produced so many cherries that we knew we just had to figure out something to do with all of them. That’s when we found your recipe! We had so many cherries that we were able to triple the recipe. We didn’t use pectin, so it took a while for the mixture to boil down. The frozen plate trick worked perfectly, so we were able to tell when it was ready. We even added a tablespoon of bourbon to a few jars. Everything turned out great. Thanks again…great recipe!
Wonderful! I’m so glad it worked for you!
This recipe did not work for me at all. There was not nearly enough liquid from the cherries and the end product was horribly thick, had to throw it all out
Instead of canning could I just store in freezer?
Yes, you sure can.
Nobody picks the sour cherries in my neighbors yard and I have lived here for 5 years, so I asked if I could pick them and they said help yourself. I picked about 10 cups after they were deseeded. I used a chopstick to get the seeds out of them ( a little time consuming) I followed your directions and doubled the recipe, it turned out GREAT. Thanks for the recipe and I think Im going to go back with a talller ladder and get some more to use in some pies. Thank you so much!
That’s wonderful. I’m so glad you enjoyed the recipe.
I just made this with cherries from my friends’ tree. It came out delicious but the yield was so low! I did 5 1/2 cups cherries and 2 cups sugar but only got 2 8oz jars of jam (I even double checked how much a jelly jar holds just in case they were actually pint jars…nope, they’re 8 oz). I have no clue what happened there. It tastes amazing though and gelled up so nicely even without pectin. If I can get a taller ladder to reach the top half of the tree I will be making more.
The yield on this recipe is two half-pint jars so it sounds like it worked out just like it was supposed to. So glad you enjoyed the recipe.
How much low sugar pectin?
You can just use the amount that is recommended per the instructions on the pectin that you are using.
I am pre-diabetic and as such try to keep my sugar consumption down. Will Splenda work with this recipe, or if not totally Splenda, a mixture of Splenda and Sugar? Thanks!
I found this article from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. https://nchfp.uga.edu/questions/FAQ_general.html It talks about using Splenda as a substitute. You can use Splenda for flavoring but it is not recommended for use in canned jams since Splenda does not have the same preservation qualities that sugar does. You can follow the directions on the pectin package for sugar substitutions and they recommend that you store it in the refrigerator or freezer.
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that this is an excellent cherry jam recipe. Thank you for sharing it. I will save this one!
Followed your recipe for cherry jam w/o pectin-40 minutes total, 220 degrees on thermometer, and it’s a sticky mess. Need to warm it to spread. What did I do wrong? How can I make it spreadable at room temperature?
I’m sorry that happened. Did you cook it for the first 20 minutes before adding the sugar?
I had the exact same problem. The flavor was amazing, but it turned into a hard candy consistency. I had to put the jar into a pan of boiling water just to get it out of the jar.
Did you see my response to Nancy?
Dear Ashley,
I was so impressed by the reading of your sour cherry jam recipe and the picture of the jar of jam. I live in lower Alabama along the coast. I don’t know that there is any way I might find sour cherries near me to prepare the recipe. So, I would like to know if there is a product that I might buy similar to what you have produced in that beautiful picture?
Thank you so much, Pat Klaas. Fairhope Al
Stonewall Kitchen makes a sour cherry jam, you might try them. They’re a popular brand around here, not sure if they’re down south though. Good luck!
I found a product at Walmart that worked really well. At the time I wasn’t able to locate sour cherries either. I make a cherry vinaigrette that we love and the recipe calls for sour cherry preserves. a google search brought up “Wilkin & Sons LTD”, Tiptree Morello Cherry Conserve” It was so good that I stocked up. The price was around $5.50 a jar. That was in 2020. I now have a source for sour cherries and use this recipe to make the jam I use in our vinaigrette, it’s even better than the store bought, Hope this helps.
Can this be made with canned sour cherries? I made this recipe all summer while the cherries were in season and it’s so delicious; this is my new favorite recipe!!! Perfectly balanced and tastes like sour cherry pie 🙂
Good question…and I don’t know the answer to that honestly. I’d imagine so? Glad you enjoyed the jam!
I made this recipe today with some cherries I had from 2 years ago in my freezer & it turned out sooo good,
I’ve never made any jam or jelly without pectin & this turned out perfect!
Awesome. I’m so glad you liked it!