Canning Recipes Using Pears

An easy step-by-step tutorial on Canning Pears. This easy recipe for preserved pears is perfect for newbies and experienced canners alike. Instructions include low-sugar and no-sugar options.

Of all the things I can, pears get eaten the fastest. There are a thousand reasons to can, but nothing is more rewarding after all that hard work than opening a jar of “fresh” fruit on a cold and snowy January evening.

If you love the idea of home-canned fruit sitting on your shelves, check out these posts on drying pears, canning peaches, canning applesauce, and canning apple pie filling.

How To Can Pears {step By Step Guide}

It is generally agreed that Bartlett is the best for canning. At the end of the day, you can use any kind of ripe pear.

Asian pears are safe to can but require a separate process to acidify them prior to canning. This post from the National Center for Home Food Preservation has more details.

You sure can! Sure “can”. Get it? 🙂 Soooo much sugar is traditionally recommended for preserved pears and that is all the nopes from me.

How To Can Pears

That being said, sugar is used in canning for flavor, preservation, and color. Sweet food generally tastes better, keeps longer, and the color of the food stays bright and fresh.

Pears have enough natural sugar and don’t needany sweetener added while canning to be considered safe. Your final product may look a bit different and have a shorter shelf life.

Personally, I walk the line between no sugar and low sugar for canning peaches and preserving pears. Please use your best judgment when altering any official canning recipe. Plan to eat the finished product within 9-12 months.

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Please note, if you’re using raw honey, any of the beneficial properties will be killed during the heating process. It’s more affordable to use regular honey for canning.

Using frozen concentrated apple or white grape juice is a great and easy substitution for refined sugar syrup. Use one can of thawed concentrate mixed with three cans of water.

Raw packing pears simply means placing the peeled fruit in the jars without precooking them, filling the jars with syrup, and processing them in the canner.

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Raw packing pears is much faster than a hot pack process, but there are some drawbacks. No matter how well you pack the jars, the density of the fruit will change during their time in the canner.

This often leads to something called “fruit float” in which the fruit will float to the top of the jar, leaving all syrup on the bottom. You’ll find this when you’recanning whole tomatoesas well. There is nothing wrong with fruit float as long as your jars are still sealed.

Hot packing involves cooking them briefly in hot syrup before packing the fruit into jars for canning. You’ll want to boil them in the canning syrup for about 5 minutes and then add them to your jars, ladling the hot syrup over the top.

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The benefits of hot packing are that you typically can fit more fruit per jar, and the near elimination of fruit float.

*I’ll walk you through the process with photos and tips below. And a printable and detailed recipe card is available at the bottom of the post.

Prepare your water bath canner by filling it with water. You just need to have enough water to cover the jars by 2 inches once the water is boiling.

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Set the canner on the stove. Turn the burner to high. Once it reaches a boil, reduce it to simmer. You want to keep the water hot so that everything is ready when the packed jars are.

Wash and sanitize your jars. You’ll want to keep them warm to avoid having them crack when placed in the canner. You can fill them with hot water, or place them on a tray in the oven at 170 degrees F.

Wash your lids and set them aside in a clean place. You no longer need to simmer lidsin water to keep them sterile. Woot!

How To Can Pears The Easy Way

To set up a work area, I use a big cutting board, a chef’s knife, a paring knife, a vegetable peeler, a big bowl of cold water with 1/3 cup of bottled lemon juice mixed in, a garbage bowl, a clean towel (for wiping hands), and a bowl/box full of clean fruit.

Cut the tops and bottoms off of the fruit. I like to do about 12 at a time so that I’m not switching back and forth between using knives and peelers with slimy pear hands. Dibs on “slimy pear hands” for a band name.

Using a vegetable peeler, peel off all the pear skins. I start from the top and make a straight peel downward. It takes a few times to learn how to efficiently peel a pear, but you’ll get there by at least the third or fourth pound!

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After that, cut the fruit in half from the top to the bottom. Take the paring knife (they do make specialcorers, but a paring knife works great for me), and make a cut from the stem to the bottom on one side.

Repeat on the other side, then jiggle the core out. Discard the core, and put the halved fruit in the water with the lemon juice.

When you have a bowl that is getting full of ready fruit, start your syrup. In a large pot, mix 1 cup of sugar per 6 cups of water and heat over medium.

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(If you’re doing a hot pack) Once the syrup is boiling, add the fruit one layer at a time (a canning term that basically means don’t totally fill the pot) and heat for 5 minutes.

Using a fork, grab the now cooked pears one at a time, and put them cavity-side down in the canning jar. After a while, you learn how to maximize your space when filling the jars. It’s like a fruity version of Tetris.

Add the syrup very slowly as it needs to works its way through the jar to find the spaces among the fruit to fill.

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Leave 1/2 inch of headspace. Headspace is defined as the space between the top of the food and the top of the jar. Remove any bubbles from the jar (I use a plastic chopstick).

Place a clean lid and ring on the jar and tighten the ring to fingertip tight (tight enough that it won’t come off, but not so tight that a normal person couldn’t budge it).

Once the water in the canner is boiling again, gently place your jars in one at a time using tongs (I prefer canning tongs, but you can technically use any rubber-tipped tongs).

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Once your jars (typically 6-7 quart jars can fit in the canner) are completely covered with the boiling water, put the lid on and boil for 20 minutes (pints) or 25 minutes (quarts).See below for processing times at different altitudes.

Once the jars have been processed for the appropriate amount of time, remove the canner from the burner, carefully take off the lid, and allow it to sit for 5 minutes. Pro tip:I tend to just slide it into the middle of my stove, as it weighs a ton.

Carefully remove the jars using canning tongs, and place them on a thick towel in a place where they can be undisturbed for 12 hours. The lids should start to pop within 20-30 minutes of being removed from the water.

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After a few hours, to check for sealing, gently press down in the middle of the lid. If the lid has no give, it’s sealed. If you can press the lid in and it pops a bit, your jars are not sealed. You can reprocess them or store them in the fridge or freezer (only freeze jars that are wide mouth).

Add 3 quarts of water toyour pressurecannerand put it on a burner set to high. Make sure there is a canning rack in the bottom of the canner.

Using canning tongs, gently place the jars in the canner. Lock the lid. Soon, steam will start coming through the vent pipe (I call it the steam chimney).

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Allow the steam to pass through for about 10 minutes. Then put the pressure regulator (I call it the chimney cap) on top. (see the 4 photo grid below for a visual of this process step by step)

Pretty soon, the air vent will pop up. That is a sign that you’re starting to build pressure inside the canner (get excited. This is happening!). Processing times will vary based on altitude. See the charts below.

When the dial gauge reaches the appropriate PSI, reduce the burner temp to medium, and start your timer. The pressure must stay at the PSA or (a little bit) above for the duration of the cooking time. You’ll likely need to adjust the temp on the burner a few times depending on your stove.

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When the time is up, remove the canner from the burner and allow it to sit until you hear a distinctive “click” of the air vent dropping. Remove the pressure regulator and carefully remove the lid of the canner (

Let the jars sit for 5 minutes in the canner with the canner lid off and then lift