These spiced pears took a while to cook, but the recipe is easy and they’re definitely a delicious addition to oatmeal, yogurt or just to eat on their own. I did these with hard foraged pears that we got off of the tree in our yard, but you can do them with pears from the store as long as they’re fairly firm.
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What kind of pears to use.
We have a pear tree in our yard that will produce a lot of pears some years, and none other years, depending on how the squirrels behave. This year they basically ignored the pears, so there are a lot of them on the tree. These are hard as a rock, so they needed to be cooked until they’re soft, then spiced when they’re at a certain point of “hardness.”
If you’re using store-bought pears, they won’t need to be cooked for nearly as long to soften up, but foraged pears like I used will take longer to cook before they’re soft enough to be eaten.
I peeled the pears the old-fashioned way, using a potato peeler. I tried putting them in boiling water, then into cold water, but that method didn’t work with pears that came off of a tree. For pears from the store, you can peel them the boiling water way, then rubbing the skin off of them with your hands.
I got my husband involved by having him core the pears and cut them up into small pieces, so that cut down on the time involved. The peeling and coring is the only really physical part of this process, and we both ended up with blisters and sore fingers, so be prepared. We cut up a lot of pears, though, and if you’re doing a smaller amount it’s not going be as big of a job.
He always makes jam in the crock pot after I showed him how to do that, so this was a little different for him. You can read about the crock put method here: Jam and fruit reductions in the crockpot
As he cut them up, he put them in a container with water so that they wouldn’t oxidize and turn brown from contacting the air. You don’t need to put lemon juice in the water, just submerging them will be enough.
We had so many pears I had to get out the big pot, which REALLY extended the process. I have an electric oven since there’s no gas line on our street, and this is NOT an ideal type of stove to use for boiling large amounts of water. I would suggest that you work with a smaller batch than I had going, because it took way too long to get them cooked down to be soft enough to start the sugar syrup part.
While those were cooking, I started the sugar syrup part. I ended up using about 2 cups of brown sugar, a couple of Tbsp of cinnamon, and some cardamom. For this kind of thing you’re basically making a liquid, then boiling the water off and cooking the sugar to make the syrup. You can add any spices to the syrup to make the flavor that you want. I added some honey to it toward the end, too, and there are other spices that you could use, here are some ideas:
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg
- Ginger
- Cardamom
- Honey
- Black pepper (just a little)
- Cloves
- Vanilla
- Sugar or brown sugar (I used brown sugar)
I stirred the liquid and brought the mixture to the boiling point, then turned the heat off.
Once the syrup is heated up and the pears are soft enough to have a fork stuck into them, but not soft enough to fall apart, you can combine the two.
Add the syrup to the cooked pears.
I moved the pears to the pot with the syrup when they had cooked down a little, but they were still too hard to eat without feeling like they weren’t cooked all the way.
I brought them to a boil and started cooking the syrup down. At this point the liquid was still fluid enough to be like water, so I didn’t need to stir it very much, it was just a matter of waiting until it started getting thicker.
Start paying attention to the syrup.
When the liquid has boiled down and starts to sound like it’s popping a little more, you’ll want to pay attention to it. At this point the sugar is cooking and will get hot enough to make a syrup when it cools down, and if you don’t stir it, it can burn.
Stir the pears and the syrup to keep them moving around and to prevent hot spots, and when the syrup starts to look like this when you stir the bottom, it’s thick enough that it will cool down into a syrup. I did this video of it right before I stopped cooking it to show what it looks like. You can use a candy thermometer to see how hot it is (it needs to be up around 210-215F, but you’ll be able to see what it looks and sounds like, too.)
Once you cook sugar a few times you’ll learn what the syrup sounds like when it’s hot enough, so pay attention and you’ll be able to judge when it’s done. Just make sure that you keep the pears moving in the pot so that they don’t burn by staying in one spot in the pan and getting too hot.
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Cool off and store the pears.
When the sugar is done cooking, the pears should be soft enough too, and you can pour them out into a bowl to stop the cooking. The syrup will look thinner than it’s going to be when it cools off.
You can also make pear jam with these, for that you can read this article with more tips: Making Pear Jam
At this point you have a delicious little treat to use as a topping for oats, yogurt, or ice cream. You can also use this as a filling for pies if you wanted to, because when it cools down it will thicken up. If you want to do that you might need to add a thickener like pectin to it toward the end of the cooking time, though.
You can also mash this up by hand or with an immersion blender and make jam out of it. I’m going to do that the next time we do this, which will be soon since there are still a ton of pears on the tree.
If you want to give these as gifts, you can get customized labels for the jars on Zazzle, check those out here: Custom Food Gift Labels. Make sure to get one that says to refrigerate the pears!
Store the cooled pears in a container in the fridge or freezer. We divided them up into a bunch of smaller containers and will be using them over time. Since these aren’t processed like canned goods in jars, you need to store these in the freezer for long-term food safety. Take them out and use them bit by bit!