Friday 12 August 2011

Preserving pears for the winter!

First I must thank everyone for their recipe ideas following our blog, Apple Harvest. I never knew there were so many ways of preparing apples and pears! They will provide a welcome break from my old standbys!

I decided to test some of our pears to see how well they would freeze and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. This is the method I used (the same can be used for apples...)

Ingredients
Pears
Sugar to taste
One lemon (or a few drops of lemon juice)

Method
Peel, core and quarter the pears.


Place in a pan of cold water and squeeze the lemon over (or sprinkle with lemon juice) to prevent the pears discolouring. Add sugar to taste - a couple of tablespoons will be sufficient for a pan full of pears.


Bring slowly to the boil and simmer gently for about 5 minutes. Leave to cool, then pack into freezer boxes and freeze.


Serving suggestion:


Defrost the pears slowly and serve with crème fraîche and seasonal berries for a simple but delicious pudding!

2 comments:

Craig said...

How lucky you are to have your own pear harvest! They look wonderful. One of my very favourite fruits.

Susan said...

That's more or less what I do, but I make a much heavier syrup and turn the excess into pear sorbet. Add cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, slices of ginger root, cardamon pods, vanilla pods to taste to the syrup and allow the pears to cool in the syrup. That way you get a lovely subtly spiced infusion. Remove the pears and freeze with some of the syrup. Add a splash of Poire Williams to the excess syrup before freezing so that the sorbet isn't rock hard.