Pit Cherries In Seconds With An Easy Chopstick Hack

Cherries are one of my favorite foods, hands down. While my opinion on artificial cherry flavoring is a bit more lukewarm — reasonable, given fake cherry doesn't even have the same taste – I could eat a bucket of the actual, from-the-tree fruit hand over fist. The only problem? Those pesky, pesky pits. 

Now, I don't have a problem shoveling cherries into my mouth and spitting out the pits like a lawless renegade when I'm in the privacy of my own home, but sometimes I feel like being a little classier, you know? And I definitely don't want to be hawking up a mouthful of pits in the company of others. Fortunately, there's an easy way to pit your cherries, no fancy cherry pitter required. All you need is a chopstick and any empty bottle with a narrow neck.

The bottle opening needs to be about the circumference of a wine bottle neck, since you're going to nestle your cherries one by one right on the top. Set the bottom of the cherry at the opening and pluck off the stem. Then, simply push the wide side of the chopstick down through the center of the cherry. Aim for the little dip at the top of the cherry where the stem just was. If you push the chopstick all the way through, the pit should pop out of the other side and drop into the empty bottle. Voila! A pitted, de-stemmed cherry for your enjoyment.

The principle of this hack applies to other tools, too. You can remove a cherry pit pretty quickly with just about anything that's long and sturdy enough to insert all the way through the cherry. I'd also recommend giving it a try with a straw (metal ones do the job extra well) or the end of a small funnel, which can help you preserve the juice and the flesh of your cherry. This will especially come in handy if you're working with smaller cherries, which tend to get a bit roughed up by a large chopstick.

Whatever method you use, you'll end up with handfuls of sweet, juicy, pit-free cherries. So, what do you do with all of these cherries? Well, you could always snack on them as is, which is my personal preference. No hassle, no fuss, no having to embarrass yourself spitting out some pulp-y pits. You can also use them in delicious desserts like cherry cheesecake pancakes or a good old-fashioned cherry pie, or even dump them into some alcohol to make a cocktail ingredient infused with fresh cherry flavor. The world's your pit-free, cherry-flavored oyster now, so eat your fill.