After a scorching hot and humid summer, it has finally gotten cool. I wasn’t paying attention till a few days ago when my mom picked all our pears from our Japanese pear tree in our backyard and brought them to the store. Yes, we have a pear tree and also an apple tree (I think that one’s fuji apple tree) in our backyard. Our parents had bought them and planted them when we moved into our current house over 20 years ago.
We never really had a chance to enjoy any of the Japanese pears because either bugs would dig through all over it or animals would leave some on the ground with their bit marks. But this year was different, it’s called pesticides. I loved the fact that our tree was organic (seriously nothing but nature for that tree) but I decided early this spring that I wanted to enjoy our pears for once. So I took a trip to Menards and asked a girl who worked there for pesticides and bought something that I just combined with water and poured around the base of the tree. I did it twice and saw a major difference this year. Oh course bugs and animals still enjoyed them but finally, we can enjoy some pears (even the ones with some minor bug bites/holes).
After being lugged around from the backyard, then to the garage, then to the store, back to the house and then being washed, the pears got some bruises. Pardon the bunny ears shadow, it’s my iphone cover.
Getting to the point, I was thinking of making pear preserves (because I love preserves more than jelly) and looked up some recipes online. Okay, getting pectin (which I have no idea what it is) and lots of other ingredients, seemed like too much of a hassle until I landed on one blog post that talked about pear butter. Then the light bulb in my head light up and thus, the quest for a good recipe. I modified some stuff from this site (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pear_butter/) to my own preference since I am using Asian pears, plus, I didn’t have a food scale so I winged it. (NOTE: I was originally going to do this at the store, but due to not wanting to occupy our kitchen stoves, this became an overnight project at home).
Ingredients
1. Asian pears (about 8 cups, I peeled and corked everything)
2. Fresh Lemons (about 2, 3/4 of a cup)
3. Star Anise (about 1 or 2 small whole ones – okay, this one I didn’t know what the heck it was and googled it. It’s seriously a spice shaped like a star and smells like licorice that I found at World Market for $1.99 a pack).
4. Fresh (Sliced) Ginger (a little would do, my ginger root was .09 lbs that was about an 2 inches by .75 inches which I peeled and sliced them into thin pieces)
5. Ground Cardamom (try 1/4 teaspoon and add more to your preference – didn’t know what this was either and googled it, looks like McCormick’s gourmet collection has one but I also found it at World Market for $3.99 a bottle).
6. Ground Nutmeg (try 1/4 teaspoon and add more to your preference)
7. Sugar (2 and 1/4 cup)
Procedures
1. I prepped the pears and ginger and added them to the pot with 2 cups water and 3/4 cup of lemon juice that I freshly squeezed from my lemons.
2. The heat was on high until my batch boiled for a few minutes and then reduced the heat to a medium. I let mine boil without a lid for a while because it had a ton of water in it for about 10-15 minutes and then covered it for continued on medium heat for about 15-20 more minutes. I am going to recommend that you should boil your batch a bit longer until everything is so soft that it’s mashable.
Pear, Star Anise, and Ginger boiling in Water and Lemon Juice.
3. I strained out the pear, ginger, and star anise and kept all the liquids. Do not pour anything out.
4. Toss out the ginger and star anise.
5. Mash / puree / blend your cooked pears. This is a bit tricky, the online recipes told me that I needed a food mill and chinois. Of course I didn’t know what these were so I googled them and found that they are used to basically have your food to be more of a mush form to give it like an apple sauce texture instead of blending everything to more a smoothie juice feeling. These cooking equipments could cost anywhere from $30 to over $50 from what I saw on Amazon and Google Shopping so as a great alternative, I used a metal strainer from my parent’s store (cost is anywhere from $3.99 to $6.99 for a small to medium stainless steel strainer). So from the last part of step 2 (where you should cook everything till super tender), I used the back of a spoon and pushed all the cooked pears and mashed it through my metal strainer (so I adding pressure as I pressed the back of my spoon down from left to right for the pears to go through).
To give you an idea of the stainless steel strainer and the mashing process.
6. Whatever I couldn’t mash, I used a small blender to blended them with some of the liquid / juice. If everything was cooked until super tender, this step wouldn’t be used and step 5 would be a breeze.
7. I added the mashed pear / pear puree, the liquids, nutmeg, cardamom, and sugar into a slow cooker and placed the heat on high. Make sure you stir the batch before you close the lid.
8. After it comes to a boil (for me, I left it alone for an hour), I turned the slower cooker temp to low and will leave it like that over night.
Conclusions
You are probably wondering for how long you cook it for, well I don’t know yet because I have just turned my heat to low for the night. But I will tell you that I made a batch with the recipe above and another batch with half the quantity (4 cups of pears) without lemon juice. The smaller batch, I decided to make this batch because I was curious about the lemon factor. I wanted to make Pear Butter NOT Pear and Lemon Butter. For the smaller batch, I did add some more water (maybe 1 cup) because it didn’t have as much liquids as the original batch. In addition, I did notice a huge test difference. The original batch definitely had the tangy lemon taste to it that made it refreshing and light where the smaller batch was just sweet. To give the smaller batch more favor, I did end up putting the same amount of nutmeg and cardamom. This was all during a taste test after I have completed Step 7 before. After Step 8, I had another taste test and definitely the smaller batch, without the lemon, gives the batch a fall/winter feel and the original batch would be great for the spring/summer season for its’ refreshingness from the lemon juice.
You don’t necessarily have to use a slow cooker, the recipe online called for boiling for 45 minutes to 2 hours until your pear butter batch is not runny if you place some on a plate; but due to time constraints (meaning sleep) and wanting this project to be low maintenance (meaning that I didn’t wanted to slave the night away stirring by the stove), I decided on the slow cooker.
This is where I am at tonight. For the rest, I will add an update below.
** UPDATE **
So overnight, it cooked well but it wasn’t to my liking with the texture consistency. I cooked it for about a 1/2 day more and realized that I burnt it and started all over again. To be honest, the cooking time is up to you. As long as it’s not runny after you pour a spoonful on a plate, then you should be fine.
Woory Market 