How to Store Fresh Cherries: Two to Four Weeks at 0 °C (32 °F), Seven Times Faster Breathing at 20 °C (68 °F)

Cherries are picked ripe and only lose from then on: at 20 °C (68 °F) they age seven times faster than at 0 °C. Why they go straight into the fridge, why not to wash them first, which varieties ripen in June.

Cherries are picked ripe and only lose from that moment on

A sweet cherry gives off 6 to 10 mg of CO₂ per kilogram per hour at 0 °C (32 °F) and 40 to 90 mg at 20 °C (68 °F), according to the USDA's Agriculture Handbook 66 (chapter "Cherry (Sweet)", 2016). Fruit on the kitchen table therefore uses itself up seven to nine times faster than in the fridge, and no new sugar is made after harvest. That is why the industry cools cherries below 5 °C (41 °F) within 4 hours of picking, stores them at −1 to 0 °C (30 to 32 °F) at over 95 % relative humidity and, under those conditions, counts on 2 to 4 weeks of good quality. Cherries are not chilling-sensitive, so the USDA recommends storing them "as cold as possible without freezing", the opposite of bananas and tomatoes.

A home refrigerator, per the FDA, runs at 40 °F (4 °C) or below; at 5 °C (41 °F) a cherry breathes 16 to 28 mg of CO₂ per hour, two to three times faster than at 0 °C. So the plate of cherries goes into the fridge the moment you walk in, preferably on the coldest shelf rather than in the door.

The season in Croatia: June, from Burlat to Regina

HAPIH's Centre for Fruit and Vegetable Growing held an open day at its trial orchard in Donja Zelina on 16 June 2024 precisely because the cherries were ripe then. Of some fifty varieties in the orchard, it showed about thirty of mid and late season, among them Kordia, Regina, Van, Lapins, Skeena, Summit, Hedelfingen, Germersdorf and the local Okićka and Kutjevačka crna, alongside the early Burlat and Lionska rana and the golden-yellow Drogan's Yellow. HAPIH has a second trial site at Kaštel Štafilić on the Dalmatian coast, where the harvest starts earlier than inland. Handbook 66 lists Burlat, Lapins, Skeena and Lambert among commercial cultivars and notes that the North American harvest runs from May to mid-August.

When buying, look at the stem: the USDA says it must be green and free of brown discolouration, because stem browning is the first sign that the fruit has spent too long in the warm or was roughly packed. The fruit itself must be shiny; Bing and similar dark varieties are ripe when mahogany-coloured, not light red.

Do not wash before storing, wash before eating

The USDA is explicit: cherries should be refrigerated but not wetted, because continuous moisture on the surface causes splitting. The same applies in the kitchen: washed cherries in a closed container split and go mouldy. The FDA recommends washing under running water just before eating, without soap, detergent or commercial produce washes, and drying with a clean cloth or paper towel. Keep cherries in the fridge in an open bowl or perforated bag, stems on, and away from apples and tomatoes: cherries produce very little ethylene, under 0.1 µL per kilogram per hour, but they respond to other fruits' ethylene with faster respiration and loss of quality.

One mouldy cherry infects the bowl

The main causes of cherry decay according to Handbook 66 are Botrytis cinerea (grey mould), Monilinia fructicola (brown rot), Penicillium expansum (blue mould) and Rhizopus stolonifer. Many of these fungi are already on the fruit from the orchard as latent infections, and they also enter through rain cracks and harvest bruises. Low temperature slows all four. At home this means: when putting cherries away, remove split, soft and mouldy fruit, because rot spreads to its neighbours, and do not pile cherries into deep containers where the bottom layer carries the weight of the rest. For cherry dishes, from clafoutis to compote, see jelo.hr/recepti.

Place	Temperature	Duration (source)
Kitchen table	20 °C (68 °F)	respiration 40–90 mg CO₂/kg/h, 7–9 times faster than at 0 °C (USDA HB 66)
Refrigerator	0–4 °C (32–40 °F)	2–4 weeks at −1 to 0 °C and >95 % humidity; warmer and drier shortens it (USDA HB 66)
Freezer	−18 °C (0 °F)	best quality 8–12 months (NCHFP)

Freezing: pitted, in syrup or on a tray

The National Center for Home Food Preservation (University of Georgia) prescribes for cherries: choose bright, fully ripe fruit of dark varieties, wash, stem and pit. For a syrup pack, cover them with cold 40 percent sugar syrup (2 ¾ cups of sugar to 4 cups of water, per the NCHFP syrup table) with half a teaspoon (1,500 mg) of ascorbic acid added per quart (about a litre), leave headspace for expansion and seal. The simpler option is a dry pack: spread pitted cherries in a single layer on a tray, freeze, then tip into a bag and return to the freezer immediately so they do not get freezer burn. At −18 °C (0 °F) fruit keeps its best quality for 8 to 12 months.