Sour Cherries substitute

Best substitute

Jarred or Canned Sour Cherries

Use the same amount drained as the sour cherries you are replacing

Best for cherry soup and cold fruit soups

Different texture

The honest best answer for most of the year, and the one most home cooks in Central Europe use without a second thought. These are the same fruit, picked ripe and packed in water or light syrup, so the flavour and acidity are right where you need them. The only difference is texture: they are softer than fresh and will collapse more readily, which is ideal in a soup or a sauce and means a pie filling needs an extra tablespoon of flour or starch to hold. Reduce the drained syrup down to a couple of tablespoons and stir it back in, because it carries a lot of the flavour.

Other sour cherries substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Frozen Sour Cherries
Close match
Use the same amount used frozen
Just as good as fresh and available all year in most large supermarkets and every Polish or Russian grocer.
What changes
They are already pitted, which saves the worst part of the job, and their flavour and acidity survive freezing almost intact. Do not thaw them for baking: put them into the filling frozen so they hold their shape and do not flood the pastry, and add a tablespoon of flour or two teaspoons of cornstarch per two cups to catch the extra liquid they release as they cook. For soups and sauces, thaw or not as convenient.
Best for
pies and tarts, cherry soup, cakes and clafoutis, dumpling fillings
Frozen cherries shed noticeably more juice than fresh, so a filling that looked right when raw can end up loose. Err on the side of a little more thickener.
3Sweet Cherries Plus Acid
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight, plus 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice per pound, and about 25 percent less sugar
This is the fix nobody explains to new cooks, and it makes the difference between a good dessert and a dull one.
What changes
Sweet cherries alone taste flat and jammy in a recipe designed for sour ones, because you have removed the acid that was balancing all that sugar. Add lemon juice, or a teaspoon of cider vinegar, or a scant quarter teaspoon of citric acid per pound, and taste the raw filling: it should make you salivate slightly. Sweet cherries are also firmer and meatier, so they hold their shape rather than collapsing into syrup, which is better in a pie and worse in a soup.
Best for
pies, tarts and cakes, clafoutis and buckle, sauces where you can taste and adjust, summer, when sweet cherries are everywhere
Dark varieties like Bing give a deeper colour closer to Morello. Pale yellow-pink varieties like Rainier make a handsome fruit bowl and a wan-looking pie.
4Cranberries, Fresh or Frozen
Taste and texture differ
¾ the weight, plus a little extra sugar
Sourness and colour are both spot on, which is why cranberries work so well in cherry-style soups and sauces.
What changes
What changes is the character of the tartness: cranberries are astringent and puckering where sour cherries are bright and fruity, and they carry a bitter note in the skins, so the dish tastes sharper and less obviously cherry. They also stay grainier and pop rather than melting, which is fine in a sauce and gritty inside a dumpling. Use a bit less and sweeten a bit more, and half a teaspoon of almond extract nudges the flavour convincingly toward cherry.
Best for
cold fruit soups, sauces for pork, duck and game, compotes, winter baking when no cherries exist
Chop them roughly first, since whole cranberries stay firm long after the rest of the dish is cooked and their skins are tough. Red currants, sold frozen in most Eastern European shops, are an even closer match on acidity and are the traditional stand-in in Hungarian and Polish cold soups, though they are seedier and disappear into a puree rather than staying whole.
5Rhubarb, Alone or Half and Half With Sweet Cherries
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
A genuinely good structural match, because rhubarb has real fruit acidity and it collapses under heat in much the same way sour cherries do, giving you the same slumped, juicy filling.
What changes
The flavour is the trade: rhubarb tastes green, tart and faintly vegetal rather than of cherry, and the colour runs pink rather than deep red. Half rhubarb and half sweet cherries is the best of both, giving you cherry flavour with proper acidity. Half a teaspoon of almond extract nudges either version toward the marzipan note that sour cherry desserts traditionally have.
Best for
pies and crumbles, strudel, compotes and cake fillings, spring, when rhubarb is in season and cherries are not
Use only the stalks. Rhubarb leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and should never be eaten.
6Cherry Preserves Thinned With Lemon Juice
Taste and texture differ
Use ¾ cup jam plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice for every cup of fruit
The least good option and worth using only when the shops are shut.
What changes
Jam is already cooked and heavily sweetened, so a pie made with it weeps and slumps, dumplings burst as the thin filling boils, and the whole dessert reads as sugary rather than tart. Cut the recipe's sugar hard, at least by half, add lemon juice until the mixture tastes genuinely sour, and if it is going inside pastry stir in a tablespoon of semolina or fine breadcrumbs to stiffen it. It is passable in a cake filling or as a sauce and poor everywhere else.
Best for
cake and torte fillings, glazes and sauces, swirling into cheesecake or babka
Sour cherry preserves, sold in Middle Eastern and Eastern European shops, are far better here than sweet cherry jam, since they were made with the tart fruit to begin with.

What is Sour Cherries?

Sour Cherries is the small, soft, bright red cooking cherry sold fresh, jarred or frozen as sour or tart cherry, including the Morello and Montmorency varieties and Polish wisnie, far too acidic to eat raw and grown specifically for pies, soups and preserves.

Cooking tips

Taste the filling raw before it goes anywhere near the oven, and add lemon until it makes you salivate slightly. That reflex is the sign you have enough acid, and it is the difference between a cherry dessert that tastes alive and one that tastes like sweetened fruit.
For pierogi, vareniki and cherry dumplings, drain the cherries thoroughly and toss them with a teaspoon of semolina or fine breadcrumbs per cup. Wet cherries release juice as the dumplings boil, and that juice is what splits the seams and empties them into the water.
Sour cherries collapse fast. Five minutes in a pan is often all a sauce needs, and anything longer turns them into jam. If a recipe tells you to simmer them 20 minutes, it probably assumed you were using firm sweet cherries.
That marzipan note in good sour cherry desserts is not imaginary. Traditionally it comes from a few crushed pits cooked with the fruit, and a quarter teaspoon of almond extract or a splash of amaretto does the same job with less fuss. It is the single easiest way to make a substitute fruit read as cherry.
Pitting without a tool: push a chopstick, a sturdy straw or the bent end of a paperclip through the stem end over the mouth of a bottle, and the pit drops out cleanly. It is fast once you find the rhythm, but buying pitted frozen cherries is faster still.
Sour cherry juice stains cloth and wooden boards immediately and permanently. Work over a plate or in a bowl, and wear an apron you do not care about.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use sweet cherries instead of sour cherries?

Yes, but not on their own. Use the same weight, add one to two tablespoons of lemon juice per pound, and reduce the recipe's sugar by about a quarter. Without the added acid the dessert tastes flat and oversweet, because sour cherries were supplying the tartness the sugar was balancing. Expect a firmer filling too, since sweet cherries hold their shape rather than melting down.

Can I just leave the sour cherries out?

In cherry soup, cherry dumplings or a cherry pie, no, because they are the dish. In a mixed fruit pie, compote or cake you can drop them and increase another tart fruit such as rhubarb, red currants, cranberries or plums to keep the acid balance. What you must not do is simply replace them with more sweet fruit, which leaves the whole thing cloying.

Are Montmorency and Morello cherries different?

Slightly, and either works. Montmorency is the amarelle type, with pale flesh and clear juice, and it is what most American frozen and dried tart cherries are. Morello is the darker type, with red flesh and deeply staining juice, and it tastes a little richer and looks much more dramatic in a filling. If you want a deep red pie, use Morello. Otherwise the substitution is straight across.

Do maraschino or cocktail cherries work as a substitute?

No. Cocktail maraschinos are bleached, sugar-soaked and flavoured, so they contribute almost pure sweetness with no acidity and a distinctly artificial flavour. Amarena cherries in syrup are much better quality but are still sweet preserved fruit rather than tart cooking cherries, so treat them as a garnish or a sauce component rather than a substitute for a pound of sour cherries.

Can I use dried tart cherries?

Yes, with rehydration. Use about a third of the weight of fresh cherries called for, cover them with hot water, apple juice or a splash of kirsch for 20 to 30 minutes, and use the soaking liquid in the dish. They come out chewier and more raisin-like than fresh, with a concentrated sweet-tart flavour, which works well in strudel, babka, cakes and rice puddings and poorly in a soup or a juicy pie.

Related substitutes

More fruits substitutes

Sour Cherries substitute

Other sour cherries substitutes

2Frozen Sour Cherries

3Sweet Cherries Plus Acid

4Cranberries, Fresh or Frozen

5Rhubarb, Alone or Half and Half With Sweet Cherries

6Cherry Preserves Thinned With Lemon Juice