What do I do with all these pears?

[jrn]

My pear tree exploded with fruit this year.  :hurray:   I've given away as much as I can.  Now what do I do with the rest?  My family is getting tired of eating them plain and in bread.  We've never had this many before so this is a new "problem" for us.

Would they taste good made into sauce?  Any other suggestions?

[dbmamaz]

Dh's coworker gave us some pears - they were hard and bland and no one would eat them.  I made pear-apple sauce with 4 each pears and apples, a little grated fresh ginger, a little lemon zest, and maybe a tb or two of sugar.  And some water? 1/2 cup?  It was YUMMY!  The ginger was a tad spicy though.  It cant hurt to try - sauce is really pretty fast.  I do peel/chop because i dont have a food mill, but its still not that bad.

[Laurel]

Pear sauce is delicious. Made just like applesauce - cook down the pears with a little water, then food mill to extract seeds and skin. I like it plain, no need for added sugar or spices. Pear sauce can be boiling water bath canned.

 

I've made a wonderful chopped apple-pear sauce that I love too. The original recipe was for apple-pear freezer jam, out of the ball blue book, but I adapted it a bit. Peel, core and chop apples and pears, cook with spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg) and maybe a little sugar, and then freeze.

 

I've also canned pears in light syrup. One year I did them with a cinnamon stick in each jar and they were great.

[aug17girl]

You can use them to make crisp.  Use an apple crisp recipe and substitute pears for the apples, throw in a few frozen blueberries if you have them. 

 

You could brush them with canola oil and cook them on the barbecue.  Good as a side with pork, on top of ice cream, with yogurt and honey, or on a salad.

 

[Soror]

Dehydrate them- they taste like candy. They make great rollups as well. I just made some this week and the kids devoured it.

[fairfarmhand]

jam.  Just made a batch myself.

[coffeegal]

Dehydrate them- they taste like candy. They make great rollups as well. I just made some this week and the kids devoured it.

I love dried pears! Last year I googled and found a couple of recipes for drying pears in my oven. Pear butter is also good, and you can freeze it for later. :001_smile:

[KathyBC]

You could can them. In the winter, when someone's sick, it's so nice to open up some canned fruit.

[kbutton]

Dh's coworker gave us some pears - they were hard and bland and no one would eat them.  I made pear-apple sauce with 4 each pears and apples, a little grated fresh ginger, a little lemon zest, and maybe a tb or two of sugar.  And some water? 1/2 cup?  It was YUMMY!  The ginger was a tad spicy though.  It cant hurt to try - sauce is really pretty fast.  I do peel/chop because i dont have a food mill, but its still not that bad.

 

I learned recently that pears ripen after cold storage just in case you get some more hard, bland pears.

[kbutton]

We can ours, and we use them like apples in pear crisp. They are fantastic in sweet potato casserole! If you object to heavy syrups in canned fruit, you can really, really dilute the syrup you make. We use far less sugar in our pears than the lightest syrup recipe we have, and they are great. If they are ripe, my kids eat fresh ones with slice of Brie.

[Little Nyssa]

Salad recipe: simmer sliced pear in red wine. Serve over lettuce with blue cheese and walnuts.

[Live2Ride]

Spiced pear butter. Like spiced apple butter, but with pears. Very Good. I even mix pears and apples if I dont have enough of one or the other

[Jane in NC]

One year when we were given a pear bounty I made brandied pear sauce to use as a dessert topping.  It was heavenly and a successful Christmas gift.

 

I also like pear pie and pear sauce (like applesauce).

 

 

[elegantlion]

Ah, I had the same question a few years ago. Last year we had none due to the drought. This year my tree is just about ready. I'm going to bag them up and give them away. I live on busy street, I'm going to put out a sign. I probably will dehydrate a lot too.