I like pear preserves occasionally with my biscuits. It is not an every-biscuit thing, just occasionally the mood hits. (Same with sorghum molasses.) Last year, when I couldn’t find any pear preserves at the store or on Amazon, I managed to get me a few pounds and tried my hand at making my own pear preserves. This is how they came out:
Kind of pale and sickly looking! They never fully jelled. More like a chunky pear syrup. Delicious but NOT what I was aiming for.
So, this year, when my ex, Tricia, showed up with several more pounds of pears that someone had given her, I decided to try round 2. We pealed all of them and ended up quite of pan full of preserves cooking down. Meanwhile, I had consulted with my ex- ex (or would that ex2) Carol about the 2019 batch and what I had done wrong. Why weren’t they like those ones her mother gave us years ago? She had said I needed to cook them down more.
I cooked these down for several hours over a two-day period–and added the 2019 batch in for good measure. This is the result for 2020:
I’m here to tell you, “I nailed it!” Thick, dark, and yummy:
I have a lifetime supply of pear preserves now.
During this little adventure, I found out that there is a shortage of canning lids. It’s the pandemic story of toilet paper, hand sanitizers, and garden seeds. All those people stuck at home and deciding to go self-sufficient. Luckily, I had enough on hand to do this project. My ex-Carol had a package of lids sitting around and my partner in horse therapy, Carl, had another. So, I’ve got a couple of packages backup already for next year’s canning projects. I gave each of them a jar of this year’s pear preserves.