Vegetarian Recipe: Balsamic Roasted Cherries

Every week on the Good Food Blog we celebrate Meatless Monday by sharing a vegetarian recipe from our archives.

Daniel Mattern is the chef at Cooks County. He first shared this recipe for Balsamic Roasted Cherries on May 29, 2010.

Balsamic Roasted Cherries

Serves 6

One of our favorite things to do with them is roast them in the wood-burning oven until they burst out of their skin and release their juices. Cooked this way the cherries make a terrific accompaniment for pork or duck, but they can also be served on their own as an appetizer with a nice spoonful of mascarpone.

For this dish, we prefer the juicy varieties such as Burlatt or Bing. Although a firmer cherry, such as the Brooks variety, holds up in the oven very nicely.

1 lb of cherries, intact (don’t pit or remove stems)

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup good quality balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt and ground black pepper to taste

1. Place one of the oven racks in the upper section of the oven and preheat to 400°F.

2. Rinse the cherries with cold water and pad them dry gently with a kitchen towel.

3. Place cherries in a bowl and toss them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and season generously with salt and pepper.

4. Transfer cherries to a non-reactive baking dish (glass or porcelain are ideal) with the stem standing up. Preferably, the cherries will fit really close to one another. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil.

5. Roast the cherries in the oven for 20 minutes or until they start to release their juices. Remove the foil, and place the baking dish back in the oven for another 5 minutes to allow the juices caramelize a bit.

6. Remove from the oven and let them sit for 5 minutes. Serve cherries as desired spooning on top a little bit of the juice.