Spiced Vanilla Bean Pear Sauce
About 8 lbs of pears cored (I don't peel or chop my pears. I used an apple corer)
About 1 cup of water
1 big Tablespoon of lemon juice
Fresh ground nutmeg to taste
Ground clove to taste
Ground allspice to taste
1 vanilla bean scraped
About 1 cup of brown sugar (feel free to adjust the sugar to your taste)
Throw your pears in a large sauce pot with the water and lemon juice. Cover and let cook until very soft. I use an immersion blender and blend until very smooth. Add your seasonings and sugar and let cook slowly
until it is very thick.
You can see how thick it is at this point. It has been cooking for about 4 hours on low. Be careful because this does pop and those pears are hot! From here you can either cook it down more for a pear butter or you can stop at this point and you can either cool it and refrigerate or you can can it.
I like to can it in pints because that size works great for our family and we don't end up with leftovers. I can mine in a boiling water bath for about 20 minutes but I recommend you checking either a canning book or the internet for specific directions especially if you are new to canning. Either way I hope you will try this and let me know what you think. I got 5 pints out of this and I think I would have had 6 if we had stayed out of it. It really is very pretty and I think on a snowy day this winter it will be perfect.
