Preserved Pears

When someone gives you a bag of freshly picked pears, one thing you can to do is make preserved pears! Canning pears is an easy way to preserve the fruit for later enjoyment when the pears are at their ripest.

Canning Pears

The benefit of having fruit trees is that when they produce, they really produce. One day you’ll be looking longingly at the tree, the next day you can’t keep up with the box loads of fruit coming off of it.

So what you do is share.

I’ll give you a big bag of Granny Smiths if you give me a big bag of fuyus. We sent Hank home the other day with some pomegranates and he showed up a few days later with a bag of Bartlett pears from his tree.

A bag of fruit is a lot to get through before they spoil. Canning pears isn’t difficult, and a great solution for fruit overload.

How to Can Pears

In the case of Hank’s beautiful pears, I decided to simply can them, in a light sugar syrup, with a few pear-loving spices thrown in for good measure. Canning pears is an easy way to preserve the fruit for later enjoyment when the pears are at their ripest.

For these canned pears, I’m using a light syrup ratio of a cup of sugar to a quart of water. You could also use apple juice or white grape juice as your canning liquid. You could even use water, though a lightly sugared solution will help the fruit retain its color for storage longer than a few weeks.

For spices, I used cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon, because I know these spices complement the flavor of the pears. You could use nutmeg or vanilla as well.