Pear Jam Without the Canning Kettle
Pears cooked down with sugar and lemon until it sets. Made at home, carried in a squeeze tube.
- calories
- 180
- weight
- 2.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 72
- protein
- 0 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 15 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Snack
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Basecamp
- Day hike
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Ripe pears | 2 lb | peeled, cored, diced small; weight after trimming |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 1 lb | equal weight to the fruit is what keeps it |
| Water | 1/4 cup | only to start the pot |
| Lemon juice | 3 tbsp | acid, and it stops the pears going brown |
Method
- At home: toss the diced pears with the sugar and lemon juice in a wide pot. Leave it an hour. The sugar pulls the juice out and you cook down less water later.
- Add the quarter cup of water and bring it to a simmer over medium. Skim the foam off the top the first ten minutes.
- Cook uncovered, stirring often as it thickens, 45 to 60 minutes. It is done when a spoonful dropped on a cold plate wrinkles instead of running.
- Cool it completely, then load it into squeeze tubes or a small screw-top jar. No preservative goes in; the sugar and the acid do that job.
- In camp: squeeze it onto tortillas, oatmeal, or a spoon. Nothing to heat.
This is a home-kitchen preserve, so the trail work happens before you leave. Sugar at the same weight as the fruit plus the lemon juice is the whole preservation system — enough sugar binds the water so nothing grows in it, and the acid keeps the set firm. That is why the ratio is not the place to economize. Cut the sugar and you have a fridge jam, which is no use to you three days out.
Pears have little pectin of their own, so the set comes from evaporation. Cook it until the cold-plate test wrinkles and not a minute less, or you will carry a tube of syrup that leaks past the cap. Squeeze tubes beat jars: no glass, no lid to lose, and you can get the last of it out with a spoon handle.
Packing
Squeeze tubes are the right container. Fill them from a zip bag with a corner snipped off, leave an inch of headspace, and clip the end. An opened tube goes on the outside of your food bag, not deep in it, and gets finished inside about a week in warm weather.
Variations
- A split vanilla bean or a cinnamon stick in the pot, pulled before you jar it.
- Cook it ten minutes longer for a stiff paste that slices, and pair it with hard cheese.
https://savoriurbane.com/dulceata-de-pere-reteta-fara-conservant