This year I decided to give Asian pear butter another try. I didn’t use an exact recipe, and I used my crockpot.
- Fill crockpot to the top with cored and sliced Asian pears (I used my corer-slicer), add 2 cinnamon sticks for flavor
- Cook covered on low setting for 24 hours/overnight/until the pears are a soft, watery mushy mess
- Run pears through food mill (I got around 12 cups of liquid)
- Put liquid back in crockpot, add a cup (or so) of sugar, and any other spices you feel inspired to use. Reduce on low partially covered until you like the consistency, I think mine was 18-24 hours?
- Refrigerate or can according to a reliable resources directions (I followed the directions in Ball’s Blue Book).
This year’s attempts ended up with a rich caramel color and while it still has a slightly grain consistency, reducing it longer really helped with that. Working with the theory that apple butter and pear butter can be used interchangeably, I’ve come up with several ideas from around the internet. With most of these I’m probably going to take the idea and modify it slightly, I already have a favorite pizza dough recipe, and a tried-and-true cinnamon roll-dough recipe.
- Grilled/broiler sandwich with ham, Gruyere, mustard, arugula & pear butter (or pears) inspired by Fall’s Sandwich and Cheryl’s Grilled Cheese with Asian Pear — the flavor combination is excellent. I may try a variation of this with the pickled pears as well.
- Thumbprint cookies (using pear butter instead of jam), I’ll find something in one of my cookbooks and swap out jam for pear butter.
- Asian Pulled Chicken Sliders — leaving out the spicy jalapenos, were Monday night’s dinner. These scored an “okay to make again” from Gavin, the boys gave a thumbs-up to the rolls (King’s Hawaiian Butter Rolls) and a nasty face at the idea of chicken in a form other than breaded tenders. Everyone enjoyed the side of lightly simmered green beans.
- Caramelized onion bacon pizza — not too sure about the arugula on top, but we’ll see. I may re-brand this as a “tart” or “Flammekueche.”
