About this Recipe

This easy dessert recipe is a great way to use up those pears you've been wondering what to do with, and it's a dessert recipe you will be sure to love. This pear sauce dessert recipe can be made in the Instant Pot, or you can follow the same recipe directions and cook it on the stove top, either way, works. This dessert recipe makes enough for seven cups of pear sauce so you can stock your freezer to use in dessert recipe later. This easy dessert recipe uses Ziploc baggies to freeze the pears. Pear sauce can be used in dessert recipes such as cake recipes, breakfast bread, or on top of oatmeal.

Grandmothers’ TIPS for cooking in an Instant Pot:

1. Stay home when you are cooking with the instant pot. It is a high pressure cooker and so it is important to stay around. The great news is that meals are so quickly cooked that you would barely have time to go anywhere anyways!

2. Always use enough liquid in an Instant Pot. Instant Pots need 1 to 1.5 cups of liquid to get to and maintain pressure for cooking. You can use any kinds of liquid, but just be sure to use liquid.

3. Find the MAX FILL line on your Instant Pot and make sure that you keep your ingredients below this line.

4. Never put our face or skin above the lid when it is opening or the steam hole when it is being released.

5. NEVER force the lid open.

6. Locking the lid properly is important before any pressure cooking.

7. Refer your Instant Pot before cooking for more safety instructions.

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Ingredients

(Print)

Makes: 7 cups pear sauce

(The exact amount you get will vary depending on the size of the pears you use.)

24 medium to smallish sized pears

1 cup water

2/3 cup pure maple syrup

2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon pure lemon juice

a pinch of coarse salt

Directions

1. This version is with the instant pot but you can follow the same recipe and cook on the stove-top on low heat.

2. It will just a longer cooking time to break the pears down. This pear sauce is freezer version.

3. Wash the pears in cold water. We used Young Living's Thieves fruit and veggie cleaner on the pears.

4. Drain the water from the pears. Pears have very thin skins so you can leave the skins on.

5. Cut the pears in quarters removing the core and stringy part from the center and place the cut pieces directly into the instant pot. Continue until completed.

6. The pears filled the instant pot all the way to the top line indicator of the instant pot. Do not go higher than that.

7. Add the water, maple syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger and salt.

8. Stir to combine.

9. Place the lid on the Instant pot and turn the vent valve to ‘sealing’. Cook over manual high pressure for 12 minutes, then quick release. Be sure to use a damp dishcloth over the valve when releasing.

10. Remove the lid and let it cool down. These cooked pears created way too much liquid for a pear sauce so we drained out almost all the liquid before pureeing.

11. We just put the pear liquid into a glass jar and it made great juice.

12. Use an immersion blender to blend until the pears are smooth.

13. Have ready Ziploc freezer bags and a couple 2-cup measuring cups and a 1-cup measuring cup.

14. Label the Ziploc freezer bags with the name of what you are putting in it and the date. I chose to put 1-cup into each bag, pre-measured so they could be used in the future with other recipes such as in baking or for a savory sauce.

15. Stand a freezer bag into a 2-cup measuring cup. This is a kitchen tip on an easy way to hold the bag up and open.

16. Use the 1-cup measuring cup and scoop one cup of the pear sauce into the Ziploc freezer bag.

17. Squeeze the air out of the bags as you are closing them and let them be flat as they will take up less room in the freezer.

18. Place the filled bags onto a flat baking tray and put into the freezer. When they are frozen you can remove the baking pan and stack your frozen pear sauce for later use.

ENJOY!

Return to this Pear Sauce - Instant Pot Method recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

When it comes to pears, there can be a bit of confusion about when they are ripe. Pears are a fruit that ripens best when they are off the tree, as they are harvested when they are mature but not ripe.

It is best to store pears at room temperature, and depending on the pear variety, they will ripen in a few days. If you want to ripen the pears faster, place them in a paper bag with an apple or a ripe banana as these fruits give off ethylene gas, which helps to speed up the ripening process. If you want them to last a long time keep them in the refrigerator.

For this pear sauce recipe, you will want to use a good quality vanilla extract. Imitation vanilla might be more budget friendly than pure vanilla extract, but using it can affect the overall taste of your homemade dessert recipes. If you are going to use imitation vanilla extract, it's most forgiving to use it in oven-baked goods, such as cake recipes and cookies, as it's harder to taste the difference between the flavor in these dessert recipes.

In dessert recipes that use low heat such as puddings, icings, and pastry creams the results will be more noticeable, so its best to stick with pure vanilla extract.