Re: [gardeners] pear butter, a funny story
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sat, 04 Aug 2001 08:26:21 -0500
These are Kieffers but a newer variety than the old "big as a softball, hard as a rock" ones. These
do ripen sweet and soft so are a delight to eat raw. I even used to like the old ones, peel, cut
into chunks and chew 'em up.
I put my pears, cooked until soft, hide hair and all, through a food mill. I get pear puree and
juice out of one port and skins, seeds, and long fibers out the other. Drain the juice out of the
pulp and then cook. Basically you just bring it up to canning temperature rather than cooking it
down.
I used to feed the stock all the old-style Kieffers that fell off my folks two trees, one of which
is still standing and still producing since it was planted in 1949.
George
flylo@txcyber.com wrote:
>
> A friend of mine and myself (years ago) decided to can up all those
> Kieffer pears her trees had produced. (yeah, right). we settled on
> pear butter since it's a cooked recipe and Kieffers are like rocks
> unless you process the dickens out of them. We peeled, sliced,
> diced, did everything known but we still had pear chunk, not butter.
> Finally after cooking down a ways we hit on the idea of putting
> them through the blender. She had a big wooden spoon she'd use
> to 'mash down' the pears and occasionally, left the blender running
> and the spoon would 'oops' disappear a little into the pear pulp.
> It was fun because we did it together but hard work to do anything
> with Kieffers. However, I've since made pear butter several times
> and never did get the rave reviews we got with her 'spoon secret'!!
> martha