Summer · One dish · A topping for everything

Roasted Cherries
with Balsamic

Name: Roasted Cherries with Balsamic
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 450 g sweet cherries; 25 g sugar; 15 g balsamic vinegar; pinch salt; 1 thyme sprig

The lowest-effort thing you can do with a pound of cherries — and it improves almost anything it touches: ice cream, ricotta toast, yogurt, a roast pork plate.

~25 min total 5 min prep 18–22 min roast

Effort ●○○○ Time ●○○○ Anytime

VeganGluten-Free

Servingsamounts scale to match

Units

Ingredients

Never cut the balsamic. It's the entire reason this tastes like something instead of just sweet. The sugar, though, you can mostly cut — sweet cherries barely need it.

Easier, if you like

Use a cherry pitter for fresh cherries — pitting by hand is a stained, sticky slog. A cheap handheld pitter does the job; a spring-loaded or multi-cherry model is worth it if you cook cherries often.
Frozen pitted cherries are the real shortcut here — no pitting at all. Roast them straight from frozen, adding a few minutes until the juices bubble and reduce to syrup.

Method

Cook's notes

One pound of cherries is about 3 cups / 450 g once pitted. Pit over a bowl — the juice is flavor.

Like every cherry recipe here, this leans on a hit of acid (the balsamic) to keep sweet, low-acid cherries from tasting flat. That's the throughline you never cut.