I got a great deal on some organic pears and conventional apples, so I decided to break out the mason jars and make some pear butter and apple butter. I also boiled the leftover peels and parts (below) and made pear jelly with the juice.
First I peeled all the pears and removed the core. I put the cores and peels in one container and the other pieces in the other. I filled the pear peels with enough water to barely cover them and simmered on the stove for an hour. While I was doing that, I cooked the good pear pieces with one cup of water until they were soft.
Once they were cooked, I pulsed with the immersion blender. Make sure you leave it a little chunky.
While all of that is going on, I prepared the jars and the lids
I wish hubs would have been home and he would have been able to take a picture of each step… Once the jars were filled and sealed, popped them in boiling water canner for 10 minutes… At this step I realized that only 2 burners on my tiny 4 burner stove were working… I had no big burners! I made do by swapping and sharing, but it proves that you don’t need alot of space (or burners) to can.
And voila…. 5-6 pounds of pears will make about 4 pints of pear butter…. I then strained the boiled peels to get juice. I used the juice to make Pear Jelly which made 6 half pints. The second batch was thwarted by the power outage. I had the canner ready to go with the apple butter when the power went out. I ended up using instant pectin and making some spiced apple jam in a pinch. It’s still delicious:) If the apples would have been organic like the pears, I would have been able to boil the peels and use them to make apple jelly and get more out of the batches.
Final Canning total: 3 pints pear jelly, 4 pints pear butter, 4 pints spiced apple Jam
Cost: Fruit (apple and pears) $11
Spices – In the pantry
Sugar – From my pantry ($2 if had to buy new)
Pectin – 1.39 with coupon
Cost of new lids for jars $2
Eating fresh pear and apple jam all year round – priceless:)
$14.39 – total for me to make. (Jelly’s/Jam in the grocery store would be about $2 a half pint and the Apple Butter/Pear Butter about $4 a pint) $38 in the grocery store.
Pear/Apple Butter Recipe
(I adapted from the Ball Preserving Recipe for Apple Butter but used pears and lowered the sugar)
6 lbs of pears (or apples)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 Tablespoon Cinnamon
2 cup sugar (I reduced the sugar)
Prepare cans and lids according to directions HERE
Cook pears until soft. Lightly blend in blender or immersion blender until slightly chunky. Add Cloves and cinnamon. Stir in Sugar until dissolved. Pour hot mixture into jars and leave 1/4″ headspace.
Process according to directions HERE
***In canning it’s important to follow instructions to the T. I adapted the recipe for our tastes, but I reccomend following the guidelines on their site and their recipes to prevent spoilage
P.S. I found this really cool site called Punk Domestics. It’s not your grammy’s canning. There are lots of gourmet recipes as well as basics of food preserving like canning, dehydrating, freezing.
