Marschino cherries

[tamarinne]

Someone out there (was it you, learnedax ?) was talking about making their own maraschino cherries at some point in the past.  (That narrows it down, I know.)    Did that someone actually end up making them?  Was it worth it?  What recipe did you use?  We're buying a bottle of Luxardo to try to recreate The World's Best Brandy Manhattan that we had this weekend, and I started wondering about real vs. imitation Maraschino cherries and if making them from scratch was worth the effort.  Also, my search at lunch today yielded about a million recipes (brine, don't brine, almond extract, kirsch, maraschino liquer, etc, etc) and if someone had good or bad results with a particular recipe, I'd be curious to hear a report.

Comments

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Well, I did make my own, just by sealing up dark cherries (I couldn't find Marasca ones) with Maraschino for a couple of weeks. That makes a pretty potent cherry, though. If you wanted something a little more like modern ones, just less artificial, you could probably get that by mixing simple syrup with the liqueur.

I would guess that brining gets you longer shelf life with some sacrifice in flavor - my understanding is that it was not part of the earliest recipes.

[fairestyarrow.livejournal.com]

For myself, before I tried making my own, I might check out the organic options, which may have simpler recipes behind them.
Good luck!

[melebeth]

Oddly enough I just watched an IRC conversation about "real" vs fake grenadine.