You can just bake them directly, like you would an apple. Cut them in half and sprinkle some brown sugar and chopped walnuts on top of them.
Apple lovers who’re meh about pears need to scope out Asian pears–when I lived in Japan we called them “pear apples” and they are stellar. Juicy, sweet, the skin is thinner than most pears but gives just a hint of bitterness to counteract the sweetness of the flesh, not nearly as gritty as most pears and crunchier than most apples. Find a good batch of those and you’ll fall in love!
Pears give me a tummy ache. I haven’t bought one in at least 20 years.
Apples are easier to digest.
I love love love dried pears. They’re sugary fruity goodness.
Otherwise, pears have a very narrow window of edibility as well as a host of other issues as given above.
Chefguy has it right. A ripe Comice pear is a heavenly fruit, tender and creamy and juicy. Every year I wish someone would gift me with a box of those giant Harry & David Comice pears, but so far no one has.
On the other hand, most Bartletts that I buy at the supermarket are a bit gritty and have leathery skin. They go from too green to too ripe in about twelve hours, and then they are mealy and tasteless. I’ve given up on them.
I bake with them, routinely. A bit of flour on top of the pie crust; slice pears into crust until full; sprinkle with brown sugar (amount relative both to your taste and to how sweet the particular pears are), cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and a bit more flour (amount relative to how juicy the pears are, but around a tablespoon or so), stir up a bit to work the flour down through the pears, add top crust if desired, bake like any other pie.
No, the results are not slop. Though I suppose they might be if you started with overripe pears.
Never been impressed by those things. Taste like watered down pears, with the texture of crisp apples.
I love pears—they are perhaps my favorite fruit for eating out of hand, but, yeah, they have to be jusssst right ripenesswise. I’ve not been one much for apples, though.
We have an Asian pear tree in our yard. We make several quarts of pear sauce every year from the yield. I don’t care for them all that much as something to eat out of hand, but the sauce is good with cooked pork or chicken. I went to a class on fruit trees. The first thing the guy teaching it said was “If you don’t have any fruit trees on your property, don’t plant them.” The reason being that they are very susceptible to disease and infestation. I hang up moth traps every year, but we still lose about a quarter of the yield.
“A pear is the best fruit…lots of JUICE in a pear…” — Boris Karloff in The Black Room, (1935), just before he murders somebody
THIS.
The standard life of a pear is something like this:
Purchase
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
Too firm
RIPE (usually around 3am)
Overripe
Overripe
Overripe
Overripe
Overripe
Overripe
Trash
I don’t like pears. They are a pretentious fruit.
I like girls with pear-shaped bottoms.
I love pears, but this.
My favorite are the little seckel pears but I couldn’t find any last year sadly.
That’s unfair. I’ve eaten hundreds of pears and I’ve hardly ever murdered anyone afterwards.
Asian, D’Anjou, Bosc, Bartlett. Those are the varieties of pears that I can name.
I wouldn’t even attempt to do the same with the apples I can name, especially on an iPhone. I value my thumbs too much.
And how do we feel about Asian pears?
We used to buy them regularly 'cause FtGKid2 liked them. I didn’t see the point. Too crunchy (for a “pear”) and not much flavor.
Canned pears are actually pretty good. I can imagine slicing canned pears to make a torte. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered canned apples.
Canned apples are usually in the form of ‘apple pie filling’.
Oh, yeah! With an apple orchard next door, our pies are always made from fresh apples.
I love a bosc pear once in a while. Any other type I buy, the thin-skinned juicy type, no matter how carefully it’s handled, ends up bruised and gouged.