Preserving Pears

Last week I had the good fortune of finding some late season pears for sale at the local farmer's market.  They were still fairly green at the time, so I let them sit in my kitchen for a week so they could ripen a bit more.  This weekend I decided that I should process those pears since I had a little time that I could devote to that.

The recipe that I used was from the Ball Canning Book: Pears in Light Syrup.  I have used this recipe in the past and I like it for it's simplicity.  I set up the canner and jars and started heating them up while I prepared the pears for canning.  One by one each pear was peeled, cored and sliced into a lemon juice dip that helps to prevent browning.  Once I had prepared enough pears I mixed up a batch of light syrup and brought it to a boil on the stove.  For this round of canning I used the hot pack method and cooked the pears in the syrup for about five minutes before packing them into jars and covering them with the syrup.  After filling the jars they went back into the canner and were processed for thirty minutes.  I ended up with seven pints of canned pears to add to my stores and look forward to snacking on the sweet treats in the months to come.