Preserving Pears: Butter and Conserve

Last year for my birthday, my oldest sister gave me a book about preserving, Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone. She had an inkling that I would get into canning, and I certainly have!

When my family lived in Kazakstan, we had to can our own jams, freeze our own veggies, etc. Otherwise you just didn't have those things during the winter. My mother was certainly up for the challenge, being skilled in that way; and my oldest sister has a green thumb, so there was always produce from our garden to use. My middle sister and I helped out with all these tasks, but I was never the one in charge (insert the sigh of the youngest sibling). So I have this nostalgia for home-grown and home-preserved foods neatly lined up in jars.

Now that my homesteading oldest sister has rekindled my preserving heritage, I can do it for myself! (insert evil laugh of youngest sibling all grown up)

I really like the book that rekindled this passion, because  I also use the Ball Jar book, as well as recipes that I find online.

These are some of the canning related blogs that I use:
Food52
Punk Domestics
Foods For Long Life
Pick Your Own
Oh She Glows

And sometimes I alter the recipes, but I always keep in mind the principle that I learned from Eugenia Bone: don't play fast and loose with the proportions of key ingredients that can alter the pH of the end product. Cause you might give yourself a trip to the ICU with botulism. Usually what I alter is the type of sweetener. I use converted equivalents of honey, agave, maple syrup, and rarely organic cane sugar in the place of standard white or brown sugar.

1 cup sugar = 1/2c honey
                   = 1/2 c molases
                   = 1/2 c maple syrup
                   = 2/3 c agave

Or I will use less sweetener and add pectin to increase the thickness of the jam,etc. This conversion is on the container of pectin that I buy.

Now to the nitty-gritty.
My husband and I picked a half bushel each of apples and pears from The Jones Orchard a few weeks ago.

I have learned over the last 2 years of doing this that is is quite hard to pick pears that are actually ripe. The variety that they have in the orchard can look yellow (especially at a distance since the trees are tall and the sun is in your eyes) but still be unripe. So I sorted the pears into categories: definitely unripe, half-way ripe, ripe, and significantly wounded. The ripe and wounded pears volunteered to become Pear&Apple Butter. The others were left to ponder their unripeness as a single layer in ventilated boxes until I had the time to turn them into Pear Conserve.

The ripe apples are much easier to discern on the tree and they keep pretty well for a lot longer, so they are still sitting in a ventilated box, waiting to become apple juice. Well, some volunteered to become apple pie for a dinner party. We stumbled onto a great pie dough recipe.

Caramelized Pear & Apple Butter

This recipe originally came from a blog which I can't find now (oops!) but I have modified it sufficiently to call it my own. Unfortunately I didn't do the best job of measuring as I went, so it's all approximate.
1. Core, peel, chop pears to half-way fill a 2-3 quart slow cooker. Cover and turn the slow cooker to low. Leave it going for 1-2 days, stirring 2-3 times per day. Sometimes I would turn it to "keep warm" for several hours or overnight if it was getting too browned at the edges too fast. DO NOT TURN IT ON HIGH. (The volume will be reduced and the color will darken as the natural sugars are caramelized. )
2. Core, peel, chop apples and stir into your caramelizing pears. Leave that going for 1-2 days, as above.
3. When you are ready to can it: add 1 TBS molasses, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 1/4 tsp ground cloves 3/4 tsp cinnamon. Stir in the spices well. Adjust the sweetness and tartness with either honey/molasses and lemon juice as needed. (I didn't add anything more then the quantities I listed b/c it was sweet enough).
4. Use an immersion blender (my preference) or ladle it into a blender to break down any chunks that remain.
5. Ladle into your sterilized jars. Wipe the rims. Apply the lids and bands. Process in water-bath for 15 minutes. My yield was 5 half-pint jars. (go here for a tutorial on canning techniques)
*I did this recipe last year on the stove top and it turned out fine, but I had to add more sweetener because the natural sugars weren't developed like they are in the slow cooker. I am doing as many "butter" recipes in the slow cooker as I can because I have been burned too many times by spattering butter on the stove. Butters spatter much worse than any jam or jelly that I have made*

Pear Conserve

*Batch#2 on the left and Batch#1 on the right*

This recipe is reproduced almost exactly from "Pear, Port, & Thyme Conserve" in Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone, the only thing I changed is the sweetener and one step. I also had to do mine in 2 double batches because I had so many pears and not enough time. My hand was very sore after coring, peeling, and chopping more than 15 pounds in one sitting, so I had to stop for the day.
The quantities I used:

Batch #1 (Yield 5 pints)

1 cup raisins (kroger brand organic)
1/2 cup honey (Local Collierville Honey)
1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice (from navel oranges I had)
1/2 cup bottled lemon juice (kroger brand)
2 TBS grated lemon(and orange) zest
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
2 pinches of salt
Combine all these in a heavy bottomed (preferably non-reactive) pot, like a dutch oven over medium heat. Stir until the honey is dissolved. Then add and stir until combined:

10 cups pears (cored, peeled, chopped into 1/4-1/2 inch cubes)
1 cup chopped raw almonds (Costco)
1/2 cup port wine (Sandeman's Tawny Porto from Buster's or Joe's Wines)
2 TBS chopped fresh thyme (pull off the leaves from the woody parts of the stems, the more delicate and green stems can be chopped up with the leaves on them cause it's too much of a pain to remove the leaves from the delicate stems)

COVER THE POT. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID (for any significant time) TO LET THE JUICE THICKEN. Because then you won't have enough juice to cover the pears in the jars. Better to have too much juice than too little, but that's just my opinion. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer for about 15 minutes. If your pears were still not beautifully ripe, then let it go for a few minutes longer.
Ladle the conserve into your prepared sterilized jars. Wipe rims, apply lids and bands. Place in water bath and process for 20-25 minutes. (20 minutes for half-pint jars, 25 for pints). Go here for a tutorial on canning techniques

Batch #2 (Yield 5 pints)

The only differences were that the 10 cups of pears had been sitting chopped in the fridge for 4-5 days and were starting to soften and slightly brown. Also I used 1 cup honey, only lemon zest, and high-pulp Simply Orange juice from the store.
You can see the difference those days in the fridge made on my pears. There was more juice in batch#2, and there was more oxidation of the sugars as they cooked on the stove. That's why batch#2 is darker than batch#1.

How Do I Use These Preserves?

The Pear&Apple Butter can be used like regular Apple Butter. On toast/bagels,etc. Instead of pumpkin puree in a pie or quick bread.

The Conserve is great just eaten out of the jar, like a chunky apple sauce, or mixed in with hot oatmeal. In Well Preserved, she includes recipes for using all her preserved foods. This week I am going to try out her Butternut Squash soup, which is blended with some conserve in it. It would also be good in her recipe for cake-y gingerbread, folded into the batter.