Yeah, me either. Pears taste fine, but they have a weird texture. And they’re not top of their ‘fruit category’ (sweet, soft-fleshed things) - peaches and nectarines are superior. Whereas apples really are top of the ‘crunchy fruits’ category.
I’ll just say I prefer apples.
I personally also prefer the taste of pears, but they’re too finicky to be standard fare in our house. Our kids love apples and pears and it is much easier to have a long lasting giant bag of apples in the house to add to their lunches or for them to casual snack on. Pears have too short a window where they’re the right texture …
And now a word from the Apple Board:
FUCK PEARS!
They also do not reliably ripen when picked green, and green-picked pears aren’t very good. They soften in texture but don’t improve all that much in taste.
I have always been indifferent about pears, but I just got a bottle of pear brandy that I might love more than my dog. Everything that people love about pears times about 10 without the drawbacks plus it gets you drunk. All good in my book.
Because you have to get through the apple screen in order to get to the pear screen. So many more people have eaten 1000-point apples who have never made it to the 2000-point pears.
Well, yeah, I wouldn’t expect your dog to be very fond of pear brandy. He’d probably prefer bacon brandy.
Pears are always standing and walking?
Actually, most varieties of pears, unlike other fruits, have to be picked somewhat green. If they’re left on the tree to fully ripen, they’ll turn into mush.
The trick is in judging exactly how green. Too green, and you will indeed get the results you’re describing.
Flavor, as well as degree of grittiness, vary considerably between varieties, even when all picked at the right degree of ripeness.
Pears are for making perry, not eating.
Red-wine poached pears are the bomb, yo! All glossy, spicy velvety-ness, yum!
I think it makes a difference how you buy your fruit, too? I get ours 3-4 times a week in small quantities, so have no problem with pears going bad
If you can get good pears, they’re amazing. I’m lucky enough to live in pear growing country so the pears in my area (when they’re in season) don’t have to travel far. Try some Comice Pears if you can find them.
Pears were a favorite for me growing up in Florida, but here in California, they are so tasteless and they never ripen well.
I would love to have access to good pears. I’d eat them all the time and thanks to this thread, now I really want some pear pie with some pear brandy.
That was why I cut down our pear tree a while back. Every year it would be covered with rock hard pears. Then, on a Tuesday, all the pears would ripen. Wednesday they’d be overripe. And the ones that ended up on the ground attracted bees.
You probably should have harvested them about a week before that Tuesday; put most of them in the refrigerator, and taken as many as you would use within a day or so out at a time to finish ripening. (Ripening will also continue within the refrigerator, but it’ll be slowed down quite a bit.)
Lift the pear up, bending it back on the stem. Do this fairly gently. If the pear snaps off, it’s ready to harvest. If the stem flexes but the pear stays on, it’s not ready yet. When it’s getting near the earliest date they’ve been ready before, check every couple of days.
Some varieties also show a color change; but you need to know which variety is ready at which color – a color that signifies time to pick in one variety may indicate overripeness in another.
I live in apple and pear country. Between the two, nothing beats a ripe Comice pear, especially when peach season has finally ended. They’re at the top end of the sweet and juicy spectrum. I make pear galettes in the fall that are the bomb. Also, pears with bleu cheese are excellent.
We did that once, specifically to make pear wine. It was delicious, but a lot of work. I fought the urge to add spices, which ruined a banana wine I once made.
You can’t bake with them. Pear pies would just disintegrate into slop.
We had a Bartlett pear tree in our backyard when I was growing up, and there’s definitely a very narrow window where they’re an interesting combination of tangy, sweet AND still crisp. You almost never see it in stores though- they’re either too early, and totally bland and hard, or they’re ripe and sweet, but lose some of the tanginess.