I’ve been eyeing a pear butter recipe for a couple months now. This is the recipe that I saw over at r/canning on Reddit. The user that posted the recipe said that he subbed brown sugar for half of the white sugar. Having made more than my fair share of apple butter in the past I wanted to try my hand at this pear butter.
When I saw that Bountiful Baskets was offering 38lbs of pears for 24 dollars I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. First off I wanted to commend Bountiful Baskets on their selection of fruit. When I got the car home Saturday morning the pears were all that beautiful yellow green, some with pink hues. I don’t know what variety they were, but the box was marked Rogue Valley Farms (which I looked up and found to be in Washington State). The pears were all firm, which concerned me at first, thinking that they weren’t ripe. However when I sliced off a piece I was amazed; Firm but juicy, extremely flavorful, and with what I can only describe as pure pear flavor. Sometimes ripe pears can be soft and overly juicy, making them delicious but messy. These were not the case. I probably had a half dozen that first day.
By the time I got back to the case on Tuesday the pears were very ripe. My bad for leaving them confined in that box for 3 days. But luckily my intent was to make pear butter and not just can them outright. Two of them felt like water balloons with the skins barely holding, but those were my only loss.
If you read my blog, and haven’t figured it out yet, you NEED a KitchenAid stand mixer. I could not make it without my KitchenAid, my AllClad 8qt pot, and my Presto 23qt pressure cooker. Those are 3 must-haves in my kitchen. The fruit and vegetable strainer (food mill) attachment saves me hours of manual labor. If you didn’t know, the skins and cores of pears and apples contain a substantial amount of pectin. We like pectin. Pectin makes is happy. People who peel and core their fruit prior to cooking are tossing away fruit pulp and pectin that would improve their recipe. So if you’re really getting into canning buy yourself a heavy bottom stainless steel pot to cook the fruit, a KitchenAid with attachment to macerate the fruit, and a nice big heavy canner to preserve the fruit. All three are lifetime investments.
On a tiny side note, I was complaining that I needed a larger stock pot to cool larger quantities. My wife made the mistake of letting me go to the store by myself. And I returned with this.
About $1000 worth of AllClad (though with some good bargaining I paid 2/3 of that). My point is I love my wife….and quality cookware will last a lifetime and make kitchen time more enjoyable.
Spiced Brown Sugar Pear Butter
Pears
Lemon Juice
Water
Chopped Ginger
Star Anise
Lemon Zest
Cardamom
Nutmeg
Sugar
Brown Sugar
Ok, back from my tangent. Start by pulling the stems out of the pears. If they are ripe they’ll slide right out. That is the only part we won’t be using. Cut the pears into quarters lengthwise and the rough chop the quarters into 3-5 pieces depending on the size if the pear. Put the chopped pears in a large pot with lemon juice and water. Add the star anise and the ginger.
Heat to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until the pears are soft. If your pears are firm this could take 20-30 minutes. Mine were soft in about 10 minutes. Remove the star anise which may be in pieces now.
Run the pears through your food mill/vegetable stained/chinoiserie to create pear sauce. I noticed that the fiber of the pears was clogging up the mill after a while and the expressed matter contained a lot of pulp. So I added about a half cup of the liquid from the pot, mixed them up, and ran them through a 2nd time. That seemed to do the trick. The remnants should be dry and solid and consist mainly of skins and seeds. Like this:
Return your sauce to the pot. Add the nutmeg, lemon zest, and cardamom.
Then stir in your sugar and brown sugar. Make sure to break up any clumps of sugar. I used an immersion blender to mix it up and to get a smoother texture on the pear.
This is the part where we talk about patience and taste. You’ll notice the original recipe called for 5-6 pounds of pears, 2 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar per 2 cups of pear sauce, and a half teaspoon of each of the spices. Starting with 38 pounds I didn’t weigh out 5-6 pounds. I simply estimated l, dividing my crate into 6. I followed that recipe for my first batch. And I found it to be to watery, under seasoned, and so sickeningly sweet that I couldn’t eat it. I don’t know if it was my variety of pears, but I basically got diabetes when I tasted it. I couldn’t imagine how much sweeter it would get with reduction. So I added at least 1/3 of the volume again of pear sauce. I also upped the seasoning. The original recipe also said to cook for 45 minutes to 2 hours. My apple butter cooks 8-10 hours and I think it’s worth it.
Luckily I had 38 pounds of pears that turned in to over 16 quarts if pear sauce to play with. Heres half of my total.
So here’s what I finally came up with that I liked.
16 cups pear sauce
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup water
2 T chopped ginger root
3-4 whole star anise
1 1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 C brown sugar
1 heaping t cardamom
1 heaping t nutmeg
Zest of one medium lemon
Heat your mixture to a boil and the. Reduce to medium. You want a good steady boil to reduce it down. Stir it regularly. And be careful. Mine was boiling and popping several inches into the air. I got some pretty painful burns on my fingers.
Please be patient. I have yet to try a fruit butter recipe that finished quickly that is good. I let both batches go just over 3 hours. And I only stopped because I was exhausted and had to get up in another 3 hours to see the kids off the school. The butter should be a deep rich color and bubble like lava rather than boil.
The mixture reduced in volume by about a third. The lack of sugar made for a runnier product. I tasted it at least a dozen times and couldn’t see myself adding any more sugar. The pears themselves were so sweet that it would have ruined it. To try to firm it up some I added one package of pectin. Not sure if it helped, but it made me feel better. I also ran the immersion blender through it again to get a smooth texture.
When your butter gets to a texture you’re happy with follow the regular sterilize the jars, fill the jars, close the jars procedure.
Process for 10 minutes for half pints.
I wound up with 49 half pints of pear butter and 6 pints of pear sauce (the left overs that weren’t enough for their own batch of butter). Not a bad haul.
The flavor is fantastic. Lighter than apple butter, but still very flavorful. The anise comes through nicely and is a great alternative to clove. I’ve had it on wheat bread and dinner rolls so far and have no complaints. It is a bit runnier than my apple butter, but not so much that it drips off the bread. It sets up more in the fridge. And again I wouldn’t trade a firm set for an overly sweet product.
All in all I really like this recipe. I’d love to try it again with a variety of different pears. I definitely agree with OP in the fact that pears need more delicate accompaniments than apples. I think their spice choices were spot on, though I would increase the amounts.
My favorite part of finding recipes is trying them and making changes to make them my own. If you try this and make some changes that you enjoy please let me know about them.
Happy canning.
Mason Jars and Mixing Bowls 