The One Fruit You Should Always Buy Frozen

I always have a bag in my freezer.

There's one fruit that I always keep in my freezer: dark, sweet cherries. They're the Goldilocks of stone fruit, with a deep red color and a well-balanced flavor somewhere between candy-like maraschinos and face-puckering sour cherries. While the fresh stuff appears fleetingly every summer, frozen ones are always in season.

Why I Always Have Frozen Cherries in My Freezer

I've always been a bit of a late bloomer. That might be why it took roughly 7,000 of my closest friends and acquaintances telling me about frozen cherries before I finally bought a bag for myself. What was the big deal, I wondered. I'd eaten plenty of frozen fruit before—grapes, blueberries, strawberries, bananas— and gladly obliged when recipes called for them. But for some reason, it took a while for frozen cherries to join that list.

What I quickly discovered was that frozen cherries do something better than any other fruit straight out of the ice-box: They snack like a boss, all by themselves. That's precisely why I now buy them all year—even during the summer months when fresh Rainier, Chelan, and Bing cherries pull their seasonal takeover in the produce section. Of course, I buy those, too!

How To Use Frozen Cherries

You may have already tried a smoothie recipe or two featuring frozen cherries. They act like flavored ice cubes, adding thickness and sweetness to cherry almond, banana cherry, or cherry chocolate smoothies without watering down the mix. Frozen cherries also make a sweet and frosty addition to a yogurt granola bowl or cherry-topped overnight oats (They'll fully thaw by morning).

Beyond breakfast, frozen cherries can also star in a toasty cherry crumble, a fruit-studded sweet loaf, or cherry pie bars. With even savory recipes calling for them—pork chops with cherry sauce, anyone?—the world is your (frozen cherry) oyster.

But my favorite way to experience frozen cherries is simply snacking on them just as they are. Simply pour them into a bowl and let them thaw on the counter for 10 minutes, so they start to soften and release their juices. Just remember that even though the packaging says they're pitted, there's a chance one of the cherries could still have its stone (or a small shard from its pit). But that's never kept me from enjoying this slightly tart and sweet treat on the daily—and telling everyone else about it, too.