Pears

My across-the-street neighbor let's me pick as many pears as I want each summer.

The tree wasn't as plentiful as last year,

but it still provided plenty for my family as well as a friend to put up.

This year I tried something a bit different and I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. This year I used my steam juicer and Victorio strainer to cook down the pears to make pear sauce as well as pear juice.

Below you can see the hopper of the steam juicer full of quartered pears. I washed them all first and just cut them up and put them in the juicer--stems, seeds, peels and all.

You can see how the juicer is set up with the tubing coming out and a pot set below to catch the juice that will be extracted from the pears.

Yes, all those pears from the first picture cooked down to half.

All that juice is in the pot below.

I took the cooked pears that are all hot and smushy and put them in my strainer. With a turn of the crank, out one side came the sauce (like applesauce) and the other end came the stems, seeds and some of the peelings. Just like that.

Here's a full picture of the strainer. The sauce will come out of the left side there and the stems and seeds will come out of the tube that you can't see. Great picture huh? :)

I put the sauce in the jars and process them in a boiling water bath for

the same time as applesauce.

Here is a picture of all the juice I collected in the pot below the juicer.

Look at all that beautiful juice. It's just perfect and pure. I processed the pear juice just like apple juice. I was able to use all the bits and pieces of those free pears. YAY!!!