Pitting mirabelle plums: the ultimate pitting trick

When mirabelle plums are harvested, adults and children look forward to the characteristic taste of yellow plums as soon as they are collected. With their numerous uses, the fruits are one of the highlights of late summer. They are boiled down, made into mush or compost or eaten raw, but must first be freed from the inedible core. The fruits of the genus Prunus cannot necessarily be pitted, but the following trick is particularly easy to do.

tool

Mirabelle plums (bot. Prunus domestica subsp. syriaca), unlike other species of plums (bot. Prunus) can be gutted without any problems. The core is not firmly attached to the pulp, which makes pitting particularly easy and therefore requires little work. All you need to stone the yellow plums is the right tool:

• Vegetable or fruit knife
• Cutting board
• two bowls

When choosing the knife, make sure that it lies comfortably in the hand and does not slip. Although the skin of the yellow plums is not smooth, it can slip if you cannot grip the knife firmly. Especially with larger hands, an ergonomic handle is an advantage, as the blade should not be too big. Sharpen the knife before use to make the job easier.

Stone mirabelle plums

Method 1: knife

Many people believe that mirabelle plums are difficult to stone because they belong to the same genus as nectarines, peaches, and plums. These are not necessarily the simplest stone fruits and can be frustrating in the long run, especially when the fruits are very ripe. Maturity also plays a big role in removing the kernel. Overripe fruits can also be pitted using this method, but they can be crushed in the process, which you must pay attention to. Follow this guide:

1. Place the cutting board in front of you and the two bowls in close proximity. Now wash the fruits and dry them well. The drier they are, the easier it is to grip them.

2. Take the knife and place it at the base of the handle. Next, cut along the small indentation that all Prunus species make during fruiting until you get back to the stem base. You need to run the knife along the core. However, do not use too much force to avoid damaging it.

3. After the cut, take the mirabelle plum in both hands and twist the two halves apart. Now the core either falls out by itself or is in one half.

4. To remove the stone, simply lift it carefully on one side with the tip of the knife and loosen it. This means you can stone the mirabelle plums in no time. Put the pitted fruits in one bowl, the stones in the other, to dispose of them afterwards.

tip: If you do not want to consume the mirabelle plums raw, but rather boil them down, you can easily remove the fruit with a food processor. Simply insert a slice for potato pancakes into the machine, fill it with a handful of mirabelle plums and at the end the chopped up pulp falls into the collecting container, while the kernels remain on the disc and are easily disposed of can.

Method 2: stoner

Compared to the above method, you can make pitting yourself even easier. In addition to the knife variant, so-called Plum pitter offered. This is a manually operated kitchen appliance, which has a mechanism who cuts the plums a little at the tip and then the core using pure force removed. The advantage: you can stone large quantities of mirabelle plums within a short period of time. The following variants of the device are available to you:

Hand stoner

Hand pitting is the classic variant of the kitchen appliance. They are similar in size to an ice cream spoon and consist of two parts. The lower part has a form in which the mirabelle plum is placed and the upper part has a device that is used to cut and loosen the core. After the mirabelle plum has been placed in the mold, all you have to do is squeeze it shut and the stone will fall out.

Kombientsteiner

The Kombientsteiner is mainly offered for cherries and plums. It has two devices that work like the hand stoner but are oriented in a vertical shape. With this variant, you do not have to press the lever shut, but instead press the lever down, which saves energy in the long run. Best of all, cherries can be pitted at the same time.

Stoners are especially recommended if you have trouble cutting or if you have to go quickly. Even children can easily and safely help with the core removal of the mirabelle plums with the kitchen appliance.

Caution: risk of confusion

The above-mentioned measure cannot be used if you want to core another, similar fruit instead of a mirabelle plum. We are talking about Prunus cerasifera, which differs significantly from the mirabelle plum, but is known as cherry plum. Many people cannot tell these two plants apart, although the cherry plum differs greatly from the mirabelle plum:

• Color: yellow, reddish, blue
• Taste: sour, stale, only a little sweet
• Skin: smooth
• Harvest time: from the end of June to August
• Flowering period: March to April

One of the most important differences of all is the core. This is firmly connected to the pulp of the cherry plum and, in contrast to Prunus domestica subsp. Remove syriaca only with a lot of work. So if you have a tree of the genus Prunus in your garden that blooms very early and produces smooth fruits in summer, you have a cherry plum. The mirabelle harvest does not begin until the end of July and the beginning of August and continues until the end of September if the conditions are good.