How to Pick Cherries (Gilas): Sweet Ones, Pitting and Storing

How to pick cherries (gilas) in one line: choose firm, glossy fruit with bright green, bendy stems, and skip anything soft, split or dull. Cherries don’t get sweeter after picking. What you buy is what you get. Below you’ll find the stall checklist, which colours taste how, how to keep them for a week, pitting without a gadget, and the honest word on pits, gout and sugar.

Cherries season in Pakistan and India

Cherries need cold winters, so they grow in the hills. In Pakistan most of the crop comes from Swat and the Kalam valley, Gilgit-Baltistan (Hunza, Nagar, Skardu) and parts of upper Balochistan, while in India it’s Kashmir and Himachal, and the first boxes reach city markets around mid-May, the fruit is best and cheapest through June, and by the end of July the season has mostly packed up.

Timing matters. Early fruit is often picked a little hard to survive the long truck ride down the mountains, and late fruit is often soft from the heat, so mid-season gives you the best of both.

Colour only means something within a type. A pale yellow cherry isn’t unripe; that’s just the kind. A dark type that’s still bright scarlet, though, was picked early.

How to pick cherries at the stall

This takes a minute. Do it before you pay.

1. Stems first. Green and flexible means picked recently. Brown, dry, snapping stems mean the fruit has sat for days.
2. Shine. Fresh cherries are glossy; dull, matt skin means they’re losing water.
3. Press one gently. It should feel firm and springy, like a tight grape.
4. Check the bottom layer. Juice stains or a sour, winey smell mean crushed fruit underneath.
5. Look for splits. Rain before harvest cracks cherries, and cracked ones won’t keep past a day.
6. Weigh a handful. Plump fruit feels heavy for its size; wrinkled shoulders near the stem mean it’s drying out.
7. Buy 250 to 500 g, not a whole peti, unless you plan to freeze some.

Stems on beats stems off. Where a stem has been pulled out, the skin tears, and that little wound is exactly where mould gets in first.

How to store cherries so they last a week

Heat is the enemy. One warm afternoon in a June kitchen costs cherries more than several days in the fridge.

• Fridge, unwashed: a bowl or open box lined with a dry kitchen towel, stems left on, split ones picked out, and they’ll hold for about 5 to 7 days.
• Counter: a day or two in a cool room. Not in a hot Karachi flat.
• Wash just before eating, under plain running water in a colander. No soap and no salt soak; our guide to washing fruit and vegetables explains why.
• Freezer: wash, dry and pit them, spread them on a tray for 2 to 3 hours, then bag them so they don’t clump. Use within about 6 months in shakes, sharbat or cooking, and expect them soft once thawed.

How to pit cherries without a pitter

You don’t need a gadget. You do need an old shirt, because cherry juice stains.

1. Bottle and chopstick: pull off the stem, sit the cherry on the mouth of an empty glass bottle, and push a chopstick or strong metal straw down through the stem end. The pit drops into the bottle and the cherry stays whole.
2. Paperclip: unbend a clean paperclip into an S, push one loop in at the stem end, hook it round the pit and pull.
3. Knife: cut around the cherry to the pit, twist the halves apart like a tiny peach, and flick the pit out.

By the bottle method, 500 g takes about 10 minutes once you find a rhythm. Keep a damp cloth close.

Cherry pits: why you spit them out

A cherry is a stone fruit, a cousin of apricots, peaches and almonds, and the small kernel inside its hard stone contains amygdalin, a natural compound that releases cyanide when the kernel is crushed and chewed. A pit swallowed whole by accident is almost always harmless, because the shell passes through intact. Chewing pits, cracking them, or grinding them into a “health” powder or tea is the problem. Don’t. We cover the same risk for apricot and peach stones in aroo and khubani ke beej.

What cherries do for you, honestly

A cup of sweet cherries (about 140 g with pits, roughly 20 fruit) gives about 90 kcal, 3 g of fibre, about 18 g of natural sugar and a fair bit of potassium. Vitamin C is modest. A guava beats it easily. The deep red colour comes from anthocyanins, the same pigment family you find in jamun and black grapes, and darker cherries carry more.

What’s real: a hydrating summer fruit with fibre, and a cup is a sensible snack. What’s hype: “anti-ageing”, “melts fat” and “fixes your sleep”, since the little melatonin in cherries is far too small an amount in a bowl of fruit to stand in for good sleep habits.

Cherries and gout

Gout comes from uric acid crystals in a joint. Some early human research has linked regular cherry eating with fewer attacks, and tart cherry products are sold on the back of it, but the evidence is limited and mixed. Eat them if you enjoy them; they beat sugary drinks, which do push uric acid up. They don’t replace uric-acid medicine, and nobody should stop or change that medicine because of a fruit. Our guide to eating during a gout flare-up covers what matters more.

Can diabetics eat cherries?

Yes, as a portion. About a cup, with or after a meal, counted as your fruit for that sitting. Whole cherries win over cherry juice or sweetened canned cherries, which lose the fibre and add sugar.

Three quick ways to eat them

• Cherry dahi bowl: 150 g plain yoghurt, 10 pitted cherries halved, 1 tablespoon crushed walnuts, and no sugar if the fruit is ripe.
• Alubalu (sour cherry) sharbat: simmer 250 g pitted sour cherries with 100 g sugar and 250 ml water for 15 minutes, mash, strain and cool, then stir 2 tablespoons into a glass of cold water. It keeps a week in the fridge. It’s still sugar, so keep it occasional.

Cherries go well with yoghurt, mint and nuts. Avoiding them with milk is a food-combining belief, not a safety rule.

Myths and surprising facts

Myth: swallowing a cherry pit will poison you

A whole pit passes through. The risk sits in crushed, chewed kernels, which is why the cyanide story is real but gets misapplied.

Myth: cherries cause a sore throat or “garmi”

No fruit gives you a throat infection. Very cold fruit may feel harsh on a throat that’s already sore, so let it sit out for 10 minutes.

• Did you know? Cherries, almonds, peaches, apricots and plums all belong to one plant genus, Prunus. That’s why their stones look alike.
• Did you know? The neon red “cherries” on bakery cakes are usually real cherries bleached in brine, then dyed and soaked in syrup.
• Did you know? Cherries don’t ripen after picking. A banana does. A cherry just slowly goes soft.

More seasonal guides live in Fruits and Vegetables.

Cherry questions people ask most