Friday, October 1, 2010

Waste Not {Pears}

After canning over half of my 50# load of the most lovely bartlett pears, I tinkered out.  Peeling, quartering, coring, boiling syrup, filling jars and carefully wiping the rims, all by myself…for days.  Next day I decided to do the rest without peeling, it made a huge difference in time.  I had a good amount left that was not going to fill another canner load, so I decided to experiment with dehydrating.

I removed the stems and sliced them whole, vertically, with my mandoline at 1.5mm.  Next, I laid them out in a single layer on large cooling racks and placed them in the sunshine.  They took one full day of Arizona summer sun to dry sufficiently.  At this point they were barely pliable and so delicious!  I was surprised as how yummy they turned out, much better than dried apples and peaches.
 
If I did a lot of these, I would keep them in the freezer for long term storage to be assured they wouldn’t go bad incase there is still some moisture left.  It was surely a great way to preserve, we all loved them to munch on for a snack, but if we had copious amounts, I would make a galette and other fun baked goods.  8 large pears, once dried, took up the space of one quart jar.  I bet pears would make good fruit leather too, anyone tried it?

10 comments:

  1. Pear leather is great. But, best of all, when you can't can or dry another pear, put all the rest in a kettle(s) and cook them down. No need to peel or core. Run them through a food mill and you have pear sauce. Pear sauce is fantastic. My kids prefer it to apple sauce.

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  2. Kara, I have a conundrum for you from one LDS real-foodie to another. Vanilla. Artificial vanilla :O
    Real Vanilla in 35% alcohol :O
    What does your family do?

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  3. Love this!
    We discovered drying pears (also in the sun - we're in southern Colorado) and find them to be the tiramisu of dried fruit - sweet, caramelly, and totally addictive.

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  4. Pear fruit leather is great but a little boring. If you add a bit of berry jam to it that will take care of it though! I also dry them like you have (I remove the central core first) then later whizz them up in an old coffee grinder and use it as sugar throughout the year. Pears are a great way to sweeten baked goods without adding as much sugar! Thanks for linking up to Simple Lives Thursday!

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  5. Pear sauce and pear sugar, I love it! What great idea's, thank you for sharing.

    My Alter-Ego, I like vanilla beans best and azure has great prices for them, but I do use vanilla in alcohol as well. Watkins is a good brand.

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  6. What a great idea...I would have never thought to dry pears. It sounds yummy!
    (And that is A LOT of pears you were dealing with...good for you!)

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  7. I love dried pears. The best for me is making pear butter in the crock pot. Deeeliicous.

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  8. Thanks for all your info on your blog. I have found so many good recipes. Are you doing classes any time soon?

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  9. I have never had pear butter, sounds amazing. I will have to look up a recipe for that.

    Unfortunately I do not have my act together enough to do classes right now:( Shooting for January 2011.

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  10. I've never dried pears, that's a great idea. I'll have to try it sometime.

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It's rude to eat and run. Humor me with conversation please!

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