I have a box of nice, ripe pears on the counter. I’m going to be away for a few days and the house sitter doesn’t want them. What can I make or do easily with pears that will keep for a week? Bonus: Without adding sugar.
Applesauce! Or rather pearsauce. Or you could buy some apples and make combosauce. The freeze it.
Easy way to make it–peel and chop roughly. Put the pieces in some sort of covered baking dish with a little water. Put in oven on 350 until done (maybe an hour or a little more). The fruit should be soft enough that a little vigorous stirring will yield a nice chunky pearsauce.
Mine’s more of a winter thing, and needs sugar, this is what I did the last time I had a lot of pears in December.
Peel, core and halve them. Simmer them in simple syrup (1 cup sugar to 1 cup water) or you could try making a simple syrup with honey or agave nectar. Add cinnamon, clove, a little allspice. Serve hot with whipped cream. Yum.
You could cool the whole concoction and store it in the fridge, it would keep for a week easily, then reheat for serving or use over ice cream. You could freeze it in individual servings, too.
Sorbet if you have an ice cream maker.
Core them, but leave the peels on. Cook, strain, and reduce. Pear jelly!
Send them to me. Om nom nom!
It won’t keep for long, but this’ll account for a couple before you go away. Halve your pear and core it. Smother each half with a 50:50 (adjust to taste) mixture of a powerful blue cheese and either Philadelphia or Mascarpone or crème fraiche. Serve with a little salad as a starter. One half per person.
No sugar is a bummer - is this a dietary requirement or just a preference?
I’d like to suggest this, but it contains quite a lot of sugar - the syrup-immersed mini buns version even more so.
Thanks, everyone. Further ideas welcomed as I won’t act on this until tomorrow.
Sadly, the “no sugar” request is a medical requirement. I could get away with a little sugar, but not much.
Fruit leather made from pear sauce. Add a little cinnamon or other fruit juice for the flavor you want. Perhaps a pear cranberry leather.