Wednesday 12 August 2015

Stoning wild plums

Firstly, welcome to Kelly Hall via Boglovin.

Home grown and most bought plums seem to be big enough to stone by hand simply but cutting them in half, along their slight crease, twist off and top bit and then a slight fiddle to get the stone out the bottom bit.

Wild plums, such as the yellow and red ones that grow quite well along hedgerows around us, are sometimes a bit more fiddly. When stoning them, I reach for my mother-in-law's 'vintage' plum stoner!

It is a beautiful item in its own right and takes pride of place on my Welsh dresser in the dining room.

The plums need to be just ripe or slightly under ripe but not too much:


There, 2 lbs of wild plums, stoned and in the freezer in about 20 minutes.


12 comments:

  1. Oh, I would love one of those. (jealous)
    J x

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    1. It is rather nice isn't it. It also has a smaller plunger for cherries.

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  2. Wow I didn't know such a gadget existed.

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    1. You can buy hand held versions - plum stoner - on Amazon.

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  3. Brilliant little gadget, the old gadgets are just simple and do the job so well don't they.

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    1. When we lived in Germany we had a multiple cherry stoner but had to get rid of it as a part broke and couldn't be repaired.

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  4. I had a little cherry stoner for a while - it shot juice all over the kitchen and me! It wasn't half as nice a your incredible vintage machine.

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  5. I threw my cherry pitter out, I had to use it over the sink, or get cherry juice splattered everywhere! It was only a hand held thing, not a thing of beauty like your MiL's lovely gadget! I'm envious!

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  6. Sue and Legaleagle - I was lucky with my cherry stoner as the cherries were enclosed whilst having their stones removed. I think the hand held plum ones work better.

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  7. I love your stoner, very jealous! There seem to be a lot of plums around this year, unlike last year when they were a bit scarce xxx

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    1. It has certainly been a good year, probably because we had no early frosts to destroy the blooms.

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