Canning Pears

Pears were on sale at our local grocery, so I bought 15 pounds for canning. I ended up canning half of them and making pear-sauce (like applesauce) with the other half. Here are photos of canning:

The set up: You'll need a big bowl of cool water with lemon juice to keep your pears from darkening during processing.


I tried to waste as little as possible. A metal teaspoon makes a great tool for taking out the seeds.


Here are all the pears in the lemon water...waiting for the jars to finish in the dishwasher.


Hot water bath processing:


I didn't take any photos of the syrup, but I used a light syrup and did a hot pack, meaning that the pears went into the hot syrup for a period of time prior to being put in the jars. I believe I boiled them for 10 minutes, but please check the time prior to canning your own, just to be safe.

I put in some apple pie spice in a couple of the jars for spiced pears.




After scooping out all the pears from the syrup and topping off the jars, I was left with a bit of pear syrup...I hated to waste it...then I had a brainstorm. I added a bit of sugar and some pectin to make a lightly flavored spiced pear jelly. After the pears had boiled in the syrup, it was left with a nice flavor.


And in the interest of not wasting any of the pears, the seeds and skins went out to the chicken/rabbit coop.


After dumping the skins into the coop, I thought that I should have used them to make more jelly...similar to the apple peel jelly I've made in the past...oh, well...gotta keep the animals happy, too. :)