The pear saga continues. Today I decided to try drying pears. As much as Sarah likes dried apples, I feel sure the pears will be a success. I don’t have the hang of using the apple peeler as much as Sarah & Jim have, but she’s working on her schoolwork. Jim has looked at all the jars hanging around & decided shelves are needed. He’s down in the workshop making shelves to put in an armoir we bought earlier in the year.
So I start with preparing pears to can. Even though it’s only a matter of asthetics, I have decided I don’t much care for the color of the pears so these canned pears sat in water with about 2 teaspoonsful of FruitFresh in it while getting them ready to cook. As I add them to the jars & put in them in the water bath, I’m quite pleased with the color. Make a note to myself to pick up more FruitFresh.
While the pears sit in the water bath, I peel & cut pears for the dehydrator. For this process I deliberately pick the very firm pears as they will dry better. Too soft a fruit will be hard to get dried enough to keep without molding. Lay them in the dehydrator & go downstairs to check out the shelves. They look good. Each shelf will hold 44 quart jars and I have 3 shelves for them. There’s a smaller shelf on top for pint jars. He’s left a large space in the bottom where I can keep my water bath pan & pressure canner if I want. He offers to put in another shelf if I want, but I like the idea of being able to keep my equipment there.
This dehydrator works really well. I like it so much better than the last one I had. The fan makes a lot of difference in how quickly things dry. In about 4 hours the majority of the pears are dried properly. Pull them off & put them in a small bowl to cool off. Once they’re cool, I bag them in a ziplock bag. Of course, that’s minus the few we ate testing them out. After all, we have to know if we want to dry any more or not. Oh yes we do.
Tags: canned pears, dried pears, fresh pears, fruit, FruitFresh, pears