Rainier cherries are a sweet hybrid fruit with multicolored skin. When buying, look for good color, firmness, and no damage or insect infestation. The skin should be shiny and free from mold, and the cherry should not have any soft spots or wrinkles. Taste one before adding to recipes to ensure ripeness.
The Rainier cherry is a sweet cherry fruit known for its taste and multicolored skin. It is a hybrid with two dark red cherries, the Bing and Van varieties, for the “parents”. As you pick piles of cherries at a market or browse through pre-bagged piles, trying to find the best rainiest cherries to buy, look for good color, firmness, and a lack of bugs or other damage.
Like other cherries, a Rainier cherry should be sturdy and firm, with no soft spots or wrinkles. These are signs that the cherry is overripe and rotting. The cherry shouldn’t feel completely squishy, even if the skin is intact and the cherry looks plump. Avoid cherries with cracks and punctures in the leather. Also look for signs of insect infestation, as Rainier cherries are susceptible to damage from the cherry fruit fly maggot.
Whether or not the stem is attached is not an indication of how good the cherry is, but the state of the skin near where the stem attaches to the cherry is. You shouldn’t see any skin ripped or juice leaking at that spot. The skin of a Rainier cherry is a combination of red and yellow, and the colors should appear robust and not dull. There should be at least some red on the cherry, and fully yellow Rainier cherries may not be fully ripe. The leather should be shiny and free from mold.
You may occasionally see a brown spot on the skin of the cherry. As long as the stitch isn’t ripped open or looking weird in any other way, the cherry should be fine. Wetter cherries that have higher sugar content sometimes have these spots.
The cherries on the lower branches of the trees don’t always get enough sunlight, which is necessary for the Rainier cherry to develop proper color and flavor. Sometimes farmers add reflective sheeting to the soil under the branches in an effort to send some light to those inferior cherries. This does not always increase the sweetness of the fruit.
To avoid adding unripe, unripe cherries into recipes, taste one after washing. Cut the cherry in half, so as not to inadvertently bite into the sour. The flesh inside the cherry should be white to somewhat whitish and stick to the pit. If the cherry looks perfectly inside, eat one of the halves to see if it’s as sweet as you like.
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