Clever Kitchen Gadget - The Cherry Stoner

I don't usually get involved with the weekly topic inspirations but this week when I saw the topic I just had to write a hub about one of my favorite all time kitchen gadgets, my Cherry Stoner or Pitter.

Many years ago now our family lived in the beautiful country town of Young, New South Wales which is renowned for being the Cherry capital of our state. Young is located in the the South West Slope Region, of New South Wales, Australia about an hour and half from Canberra our nations capital. A region perfectly suited to the produce of beautiful stone fruit it is a cold and frosty region in Winter and hot and dry in Summer. Competing with it's sister producer in the Country town of Orange, Young produces some of the best Cherries Nationwide.

A lover of Cherries, and most stone fruit, cherries of course were regularly on the menu and as a family we were excited each year with the arrival of the first fruits on the trees and prayed that good weather would prevail and frost, hail and pests would be kept away from the precious crops until harvest. It was a delight to serve the delicious fruit whether in a pie, on a cake, in a strudel (delicious) as jam, served with ice cream or as a great edition to the school lunch box ah la natural.

So it was with great consternation that my husband who loved the taste of the fruit and longed for it as much as I did would very rarely eat them citing his dislike of the rather large pip in the fruit as the reason. Needless to say in frustration I tried to get the pips out of his cherries before serving them up and would try to cut, squeeze or mash them out. Until one day I just happen to relay the difficulty I was having with a friend, who suggested buying a Cherry Stoner. I had never heard of an aid to remove the pips before and excited at the thought I researched the gadget and tracked one down.

And now so many years later I am still using this handy little gadget and not just for Cherries but it does a great job with Olives and as a lover of Olives as well I thought others might like to know about my favorite kitchen gadget.

Description

The pitter I use is a small hand held device that holds a cherry in place and pushes a rod through the cherry pushing out the pit. When I bought mine there were few on offer but now many different designs of cherry pitters are available in kitchen supply stores and in stores such as Target and Walmart in the US. Some pitters like mine are hand held processing one cherry at a time while others are more complex and sophisticated and offer splatter shields to reduce juice splattering everywhere and if you don't like mess this type may be for you, and some can pit several or more cherries at one time.

Why Buy a Cherry Pitter

1. In my case with the volume and abundance of fruit each year I needed to get the job done quickly.
2. This small labor saving device is almost 100% accurate in removing stones.
3. Kid's love to help (again if you don't mind the mess).
4. Is a cheap and economical kitchen gadget retailing in most stores at less than twenty dollars.
5. My acquisition made a very happy husband.

Where to Buy your Pitter

1. Kitchen supply stores
2. Target
3. Amazon online
4. Walmart in the US
5. Ebay

If you love Cherries as much as I do and want to make jam, pies etc and are able to prevent yourself from devouring them as soon as you buy them, then I am sure you will find the purchase of this simple kitchen gadget to be so worth your while.

Enjoy.