Cooking with Dried Cherries

There are nearly 28,000 full-time residents of Door County, Wis. Add 20,000 part-time residents and 1 million summer tourists to that, and you have 1.5 million people—still not enough to make a dent in the roughly 12 million pounds of fresh cherries that come in fast and furious each July.

To prolong this precious bounty, residents dry them and pack them in bags to use all year. Plump and scarlet, tart and sweet, dried cherries make everything taste better. Toss them in a salad with toasted walnuts, greens and feta cheese, or tuck them into buttery scones.