Orange Pear Butter Canning Recipe!

This is fantastic and a great recipe for those hard pears that you are lucky enough to find or be given!

Orange Pear Butter

Ingredients:

4 quarts (16 cups) of peeled, seeds removed and roughly chopped unripe pears
4 cups of sugar
Zest and juice from 2 oranges
1 t nutmeg
2 T lemon juice
1/2 c water

Directions:

Bring all ingredients in large pot to boil.   Reduce temperature to simmer.  When pears begin to soften (between 1 -2 hours) use an immersion blender to blend ingredients to a sauce-like consistency.  At this point you have pear sauce (like apple sauce) and you can can it if you choose.  I was highly tempted to at this point because it is so good.

To continue with pear butter, move pear sauce to crockpot.  Place on low until it reaches butter consistency.  It will darken as it thickens.  At this point it was night and I put my crockpot on low for four hours and let it automatically turn to warm until morning.  I placed a spoon under the top to allow the steam to vent. The next morning I reset it to low and after two hours it was ready to can.  Place into sterilized jars and water bath for 10 minutes.

What To Do With Hard Pears...

Pear Preserves using unripe pears!  Yumm!

If you are ever fortunate enough to locate an unattended pear tree and wondered what to do with your windfall, here is a fantastic recipe.  There are many different types of pear trees.  Some are eating pears and some are cooking pears.  While both come off the tree hard, cooking pears tend to stay hard and do not soften with time.  Which ever pear that you have, if it is hard, this is the recipe for you.  It actually requires unripe pears since they will keep their shape and not dissolve with cooking.  However, they will soften to perfection.

Unloved pears from the front of an ancient apartment building at my old college!

Pear Preserves

Ingredients:

4 1/2 quarts (18 cups) peeled, seed removed, and chopped small hard unripe pears
2 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
16 oz can crushed pineapple (2 small cans)
4 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
3 T lemon juice
Lemon juice for chopping

Directions:

Chop pears, placing them into water with lemon juice to keep from turning brown.

Drain once chopped.

In a large stock pot, place half the pears, sprinkle with half the sugar, half the spices and half the pineapple.  Repeat with remaining halves.

Refrigerate over night.  The next day juice will have accumulated.

Add lemon juice.  Simmer until pears are soft and sauce is at desired thickness.  Stir occasionally, more often toward the end.  This will take between 2 and 4 hours.  If pears are ready and sauce has not thickened as desired, remove some juice and add 2 tablespoons of corn starch.  Mix and then return to pot to thicken.

Place in sterilized jars and water bath can for 15 minutes.

This is really, really good!