"Pitting Sweet Cherries......"

When Don and I were in Bed, Bath, and Beyond (I love that store!), we found this cherry pitter.  I'd originally figured I would get the hand held one that does a single cherry each time, but when I saw this, I figured why not?  It was 2 1/2 times more than the single pitter (but only $20) so for that price, and if it made part of the preserving process easier and more efficient, it would be worth every extra penny.   :)  It does a very good job but during its initial use yesterday, I also found out that it does skip dropping the cherry pit down into the "catcher area" once in awhile, leaving it in the cherry with the hole cut through it, but no pit expelled.  Since my plan was to dry 4 quarts of sweet cherries yesterday, I hoped that the cherry would shrink and sort of push the pit into sight, which did happen twice.  I found them exposed when I was removing the dried cherries from the dehydrator this AM, so I'm hoping I didn't miss any.  By the way, I had the dehydrator running through the night instead of during the day.  That gave the dehydrator a long, uninterrupted period of time to do its thing without any shut off times when we were out on errands.  Neither of us feel comfortable leaving any appliances running when we're not here, so the overnight drying worked well for us.  :)

The cherry pitter is made in Germany.  Thank goodness there were some English instructions, too, as my 3 years of High School German did not help.   ;)

 
The ever watchful Don was there to take process photos.  :)

There were a few "occasional" splashes/spritzes from the juicer cherries, so if you were to get one of these pitters, be sure to lay out some newspaper (as I later did) and wear something that  is OK to get splashed on by cherry juice.

I also found that if I loaded too many cherries into the hopper, they needed help more often in finding their way into the groove for pitting.

4 quarts of cherries were processed very quickly.  I don't know what I was thinking about when considering buying the single cherry, handheld pitter!