Six pounds of sliced, Kieffer pears and five pounds of sugar made enough pear preserves to fit into 7 pint jars. I was figuring that I would get ten pints but I was wrong.
The recipes on the internet were all volume based, 2-parts thinly sliced pears to 1-part sugar. I did that by eye-ball and those are the weights I ended up with.
The Kieffer pears are very easy to peel. If I get good reviews from my customers, then I will do this again next year. Mostly, I am trying to match memories from when folks my age were kids. The difficultly is that nobody gets as hungry as a kid and no food ever tastes as good. Another joker-in-the-deck is that our taste-buds change. We can tolerate more sour and bitter and they are not as acute.
Lol. So it seems my taste buds mirror my current state: not nearly as acute and able to handle the sour and bitter moments of life better than when I was young. But I still love the taste of a good pear.
ReplyDeleteMF
Did you add anything to the preserves? Cinnamon, or allspice? I have an abundance of pears this year and I’m thinking of preserves too. I normally just can them for cobbler or pie.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH
I found this link useful: https://diggingfood.com/2018/08/30/old-fashioned-pear-preserves/
DeleteI added the juice of two very large lemons and the zest from the same. I added one shake of cinnamon to the entire batch.
Pears are mild in aroma and flavor and it is easy to overwhelm them.
Thanks! I like the idea of resting in sugar overnight. Sounds easy. I have green pears and riper ones, more coming.
DeleteSNH
Rats! It did not set. There was not enough pectin in the pears.
DeleteNot a big deal to pop-open the jars, add pectin and reheat and recan. Just time consuming.
Consider adding pectin if you are using mostly ripe pears.
I had a similar problem with peach jam this year. It’s runny, but not too bad. I added some blueberries to one jar, had to reprocess twice with more pectin. Still runny. But tastes good.
DeleteI’m going to peel and chop some pears and weigh them to determine how much is a pound or half pound. That should give me a base of cups- to-pounds ratio for the future.
SNH
Yum!
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