Asian pears

We have a mature Asian pear tree in the yard and I just tried to make sauce from some of them that were mishapen. I cut them up, took out the stem, and boiled until tender just as I do apples and European (Bartlet) pears. After I ran them through the food mill, I tasted them and they had a nasty almost bitter astringent aftertaste. Then I remembered that I was in the habit of chewing a bite of the fresh pear, swallowing the juice and spitting out the pulp while I walked around the yard. Sorry if this grosses anyone out. The reason I did this is that the peel was--guess what--bitter and astringent, totally spoiling the ambrosia that was the juice.

I let a small bowl of the puree cool to see if the taste would improve. Nope. I decided not to waste any more of my time, propane to process them or lids. Fortunately, it was only a small amount, not quite a bushel so no big loss and I have plenty of apples waiting for me.

Has anyone else had this experience with Asian pears? Ours is a Shikoku, I think, but not positive without going to look it up. Except for working with a puree instead of halves, I added lemon juice at the rate recommended by the Oregon Extension Service. The halves I canned last week with the lemon juice and a very light syrup taste fine. I peeled them before cutting and cooking for hot packing them. Our European pear, a Maxine, made wonderful sauce made the way I processed the Asian pears.

Thanks for your replies.


Thanks for your input.

I made pear butter with Asian pears this year. I have no idea what the variety was - the pears were given to me by a co-worker. I cored the pears but didn't peel them then cooked them until they were soft & put them through a food mill. I didn't notice any bitter taste at all. As a matter of fact, I think they were a bit too sweet, wish I had added more lime juice.

Our weather this summer was pretty hot and dry and my co-worker told me this is the first year their pears were sweet enough to eat fresh.....is it possible that your weather made the pears bitter?

We had extremely hot weather too but oddly enough, we had rain most of the time when we needed it. If it didn't come, I watered all the trees. The bitterness/astringent quality is only in the peel but these were pears with a lot of hard spots in them, lumpy-bumpy things that would have been impossible to peel. The tree is about 10 years old and this is the 4th year it's produced and with the heaviest crop. Go figure.

Thanks, Coalroadcabin, for your input. Glad yours turned out well. Don't know what I'll do with these pears in the future.

There are a number of Asian pear varieties w/different shapes, colors when ripe & flavor/sugar content. All seem to have a round or flattened-globe shape. They have in common a crisp, clean juiciness. For that reason, I consider them a table fruit, and don't process. They can be picked greenish and peeled at first, and eaten w/the skin as they ripen on the tree. They keep LONG if stored at 40' or below. My spare fridge is running now at just "on", which holds about 42', for slightly-extended storage of fresh cukes, zukes, pears, Asian pears, melons. Sue

Use Less, this tree produced about 3 1/2 bu of fruit and I do have some in our spare frig as well or I wouldn't have messed with trying to process them. Just gotta peel those things even before eating fresh.

Thanks for all the input, folks.