When are pears ripe?

[Richard]

We have HUNDREDS of pears hanging off the trees in the orchard.

As a preface, I'll admit I've never been too much of a pear person my entire life. I always found their consistency kind if interesting yet also being one of the very things I didn't like about them.

Last year I probably had for the first time in my life, a virgin unprocessed in any way/shape/form.... pear off the tree.

I think I liked it even worse!!

We picked them in what was probably Oct or perhaps early November. They were the last of the last hanging and we got them down just to see what they'd be like.

They were VERY VERY VERY VERYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY crisp and crunchy. More crisp/crunchy than an apple. They felt totally non-ripe or at least, relative to what I'd come to expect after eating canned pears.

We went ahead and made some kind of pear butter with them and the people we gave that to loved it. I was more than happy to give it all away.

I've had people just swoon over how much they love good pears.

Now that we have literally hundreds of them hanging off the branches (breaking some of the branches because of the weight) I don't want to see them simply go to waste.

Picked a couple over last weekend and my brother in law munched into one. He said it was not ripe yet.

So, how do I know when they are ready to pick??? They LOOK like they are ripe so I can't go by that. Last year at the beginning of winter (as in starting to wear a jacket during day and definatley wearing a jacket at night) they STILL didn't seem (to me) to be ripe.

What's up with these darn things???

Unfortunately, the plethora of apples (and very delicious) we had last year did not materialize this year. I was looking forward to eating a dozen of them per day. Man, were they good.

I digress.

Any thoughts on pears??

 

[6string]

Google " when to pick pears" or Yahoo. A lot of Ag. extension websites have info on this. I did that last year. We have two old Manjou pear trees that were loaded last year,not so this year. I picked mine in late Set. or early Oct. They had started turning yellow but were still firm. I let them set for a few days as recommended and they were really good. Unfortunately, I did not get to preserve any of them. I bought two more trees this spring,one Bartlett and I think the other is an Orient. I hope they wills tatrt producing soon. I plan on getting some more this spring.

 

[jayste]

We've got one tree of some species and not sure which. I do know it's not Bradford because it bears fruit! Anyway, we pick ours here in Oklahoma in October. They will soften if you let them set some. My inlaws can them. Sure are good and you don't have to add any sugar!

Jay

 

[MossRoad]

You have to pick them when they are hard and ripen them off the tree. If you spread them out on a few sheets of newspaper in a cool, dry place, they will ripen in a few days. Just be careful, because once they ripen, they ripen fast and then spoil. You can can them very easily. Just peel them, cut them in half or quarter, core them and boil them in sugar water until they are soft. Then put them in clean sterile jars and cover with the canning liquid. Process them in a water bath canner for 20 minutes or so and they will keep for a year or more in a cool dark place. Mmmmm....

Simple pear cobbler recipe:

Melt a stick of butter in a tall baking dish.
Add a quart of drained pears.
In a separate large bowl mix 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of milk.
Pour that over the pears and butter.
Bake at 350 until it is doughy and bubbly.
Remove from oven for 10 minutes.
Spoon into bowls and add a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.
Enjoy!

 

[Egon]

If your in a pear fight and they splatter when you get hit chances are they are over ripe or the other fellow has a very good arm!

 

[Bird]

When I was a kid, we made lots of pear honey every year. The link appears to be the same recipe we used. This recipe calls for "chopped" pears, but we ran them through the old hand cranked food grinder clamped onto the edge of a table. A few years ago, I didn't have a meat grinder, so I ran them through the grating blades of the food processor. You want the pears to still be good and crisp.

The pear honey is all purpose food. It's good as preserves on toast or biscuits for breakfast. It's good as a topping for vanilla ice cream (homemade or store bought), and when my mother would make a two layer cake, she'd spread frosting on the outside, but instead of frosting between the layers, she'd put a thick layer of pear honey; delicious.

 

[MossRoad]

Bird,
That pear honey is a lot like our apple butter. I read the recipe. I bet you could make it in a crock pot like we make our apple butter. Just let it cook for 24 hours on low, then use a potato masher to break it up. That may avoid the need to chop it up. It works with apples cut into 8 slices.

 

[Bird]

David, all the apple butter we made, or that I've bought, has all the ingredients uniformly blended, while the pear honey still has "chunks" (for lack of a better word), more like preserves. The pears and pineapple are softened somewhat by the cooking, but not completely mashed. Hard to describe, I guess. One difference I noticed is that their recipe calls for the crushed pineapple "with syrup". We always drained the pineapple (and I drank the juice or syrup), so when you put the ground up pears, pineapple, and sugar on to cook, it appears very dry, but it'll make enough juice as it cooks.

I don't think we ever tried making it in a crockpot, but I'm sure that would do the job just fine; just take a little longer to cook.

 

[J35]

They make pretty good Moonshine.

Have fun

 

[MossRoad]

They make pretty good Moonshine.

Have fun

Yeah. In the early fall if there are any pears left on the tree the bald faced hornets tear into them. Then they just sit there and suck on them for hours and hours. They get pretty docile. I've actually picked a pear that I didn't know had the other side torn open and had 5-6 hornets sitting in there and I didn't get stung. I wonder if the hornets are getting loopy on the fermented pears?