Making Pear Butter

Tricia purchased a case of organic pears from Azure Standard, a co-op that we belong to, since our little pear trees did not produce any pears this year.  We were going to get a case of apples, but they were a little pricey.  I don't know what happened to our pear trees. They just weren't happy this year. Tricia peeled the best looking pears from the box and sliced them up and froze them in freezer bags so that we'll have pear pies and pear cobbler over the winter.

At the bottom of the box there were some pears that were bruised up and soft and didn't look very appetizing, but you know what?  They are going to make something that makes my taste buds get happy just thinking about it - Pear Butter!  Just like apple butter, but made from pears.  We found the recipe at a website called www.gimmesomeoven.com.  You can make some good stuff from things that don't look so appetizing anymore.  I used to work in our family grocery store and every day we'd go through the produce on the display and remove the produce that wasn't very pretty and thus wouldn't sell.

Lots of people might throw things away when they don't look nice, but some of that stuff is the best. I can still remember Bumby's (my grandmother's) banana bread and banana pudding with vanilla wafers in it that she made from the bananas that were totally brown and soft.  Not much went to waste at the Kinder Supermarket.

The bottom of the barrel

I picked out the most over-ripe pears and weighed out 3 pounds.

3 Pounds of ugly pears

Then I peeled them with a potato peeler and pulled out the stems.  They were very soft in my hands and it made a mess!  I cut them in half and carefully cut out the seeds and any of the core that was hard.

Peeled Pears

Once that was done I laid them out on the cutting board and diced them up into little cubes.

Slice 'em and dice 'em

Tricia spooned all that into a pot and added 3 Tablespoons of honey that was robbed from my buddy's bees, 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice that we juiced and froze from some lemons given to us last winter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon salt, a dash of ground nutmeg, and a smidgen of ground cloves, making sure that we measured the dash and smidgen accurately (ha ha). 

All the ingredients added to the pot

We stirred it all up and brought it to a boil and then turned the heat down to medium and let it simmer for about an hour with the lid cracked open.  Every once in a while, we'd peek in and stir it.  It will gradually thicken and the smell will attract everyone to the kitchen.  The concoction will bubble to the top with a big "blub" and you just can't wait to taste it!

Bubbling Pear Butter

After about an hour, your pear butter is done.  You can pour all this into a food processor and puree it into a finer consistency or you could leave it chunky.  It was a "school night" and was late and we really didn't feel like washing the food processor and blade, so our pear butter is going to be the chunky variety.  I think it will 'eat' just fine.

The finished product ready to spoon into jars

We used a canning funnel to transfer the pear butter into canning jars.  Once it cooled, we moved it to the refrigerator.  The recipe that we found online Here says that it will keep for a week in the fridge. We'll eat some and will freeze the rest to be able to enjoy the sweet-spicy goodness on a winter morning atop homemade biscuits.

Pear Butter all canned up

This almost just isn't fair to show you this next 'spoon shot' of the warm pear butter. Doesn't that look good?

A spoonful of delicious pear butter

Can't wait to have some of that slathered over some hot biscuits!