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.