Pear Butter, One Great Comfort Food

After we finished canning all of the pears, we were ready – well, kind of – to make pear butter. We made some last summer for the first time and it was very good. The recipe is so simple. All you need is plenty of time to cook down the pears.

I saved the softest pears to use in the butter. When I was almost finished peeling them, Frank started the first half cooking. Jackie Clay has a simple, yummy recipe in her book, Growing and Canning Your Own Food.

The recipe calls for:
1/2 cup water
7 lbs. pears
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
4 cups sugar (we used 2 1/2)
Put everything in the pot and start simmering. We ended up with 11 1/2 pounds of pears so we adjusted the recipe accordingly. 

We let the butter simmer all afternoon, but it still wasn’t cooked down to the desired consistency. This is all a matter of preference. Here it is about half way through the day. So, into the frig it went.

Life got busy and a few days later, Frank started the butter simmering again and let it cook down for another afternoon. It cooked down to a beautiful, rich butter. 

We planned to can it up that evening, but there just weren’t enough hours in that day. So the next morning, after another night in the frig, it finally made it into the jars. We processed it in the water bath for 10 minutes.

Our 11/ 1/2 lbs of pears yielded 7 1/2 pints of butter. We still have some butter left from last year, so here is a comparison. Since we took more time to cook down the butter this year, it is a darker color.

It is hard to tell in a picture, but this year’s butter is also thicker with less liquid surrounding the fruit pulp.

We plan to go and pick more pears if there are any left. Sometimes I wonder at all of these plans we have, but we both feel a sense of urgency about doing all we are able. We will continue to can and preserve our harvest as time allows. Each new jar of food on the shelf adds to our peace of mind. What are you adding to your shelf today?

Until next time – Fern