Spiced Pears

Wednesday night's project was to finish canning pears. We worked on them Monday night too, and now I think we're finished, except for making some Spiced Pear Jam. That will have to wait until I have a little more time. Larry had everything ready to go when I got home a little after 6pm, and he helped. We can get 9 quarts, a full canner load, ready to process in about 40 minutes when we work together.

We ended up with 35 quarts of pears canned in light syrup. When we finished tonight I still had a few pears left. I remember my mother making spiced pears when I was a girl. I remember them on the shelves in the pantry, more amber than the other pears. I also remember I didn't like them! But my tastes have changed and I wanted to try making them myself and see if the flavor is more agreeable now.

And oh my, it certainly is! I tried a taste of the one last piece of pear left over from filling the jars, and it was delicious. I only made 5 pints, and now I'm wishing I'd made more.

Here's the recipe I used, based loosely on a couple I found in Joy of Cooking:

About 6 pounds of pears (I used Bartlett)

Sugar and water (allow one cup sugar to one cup water per pound of pears)

6 cinnamon sticks, about 3" long

2 tablespoons whole cloves

2 teaspoons whole allspice (the recipe called for whole ginger but I didn't have any. However, a different recipe called for allspice, so I used it instead).

Wash, peel and core the pears. Put the spices in a cloth bag.

Mix the sugar and water, add the bag of spices and simmer to a thick syrup. Add the pears and simmer for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and place pears into hot sterilized jars. Pour the hot syrup over the pears. Tighten down the hot lids and process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes. Remove from the canner, check and tighten the lids and store.

I took the spices out of the bag and added them to the jars too--one cinnamon stick and a teaspoon or so of the other spices per jar. I'm wondering if this will make the flavor too strong, but there's only one way to find out--try it. And in another cookbook, the photos showed the spices in the jar with the pears, so I'm willing to give it a try because it just looks so pretty.

The turkey cooker and the canner on the deck, still doing duty in the snow.