C's BBQ Pear Sauce

Hello Friends,
I've finally sat down with a pretty horrible cup of tea to catch up with my blog & hopefully let the Eau de Vinegar from this morning's efforts evaporate from my person. Albert Whiskers is fed up with it settling into his fur & has stomped off through the cat flap to smell the flowers.

We have another pear glut here at the People & Cats Republic. So far, (aside from eating them simply as fresh fruit), I've baked two pear & cinnamon loaf cakes, made blackberry & pear compote, a crumble base & ten jars of pear & blackberry jam. As I've achieved this mainly just from picking up windfalls, our pear tree still looks like this:

So this morning, I've made a batch of my BBQ Pear Sauce. I came up with this recipe last time we had a glut of pears & the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship loved it. I thought it needed tweaking slightly, so here is the recipe with the tweaks, which were just to intensify the flavours a little where I thought this was needed. It's my own recipe, so I'm happy to share it, although it's always nice to get the credit (if it turns out nicely.....if not, you can blame it on whoever you like!)
You don't need much kit - a large pan with a lid (I used our big stock pot), a wooden spoon, a sieve, a large bowl, a jug & some jam jars with lids, which you need to wash thoroughly then lay in a roasting tin or similar ready to sterilize. If you want to get all fancy pants, you could add a spatula. Oh, & a stick blender or liquidiser. 

C's Pear BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
3lbs pears
1lb onions
8 large garlic cloves
A piece of root ginger (about 5 cms x 2 cms)
8 small - medium dried red chillies
4 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp English mustard powder
2 tsp ground allspice
7 oz raisins
4 tsp salt
2 tbsp black treacle
1 pint malt vinegar
1lb dark brown sugar

Method
Heat the oven to Gas 2 & pop in the tray of clean jars to sterilize. They'll be in there a good long time, so turn it down to the lowest setting once you've done the prep.
OK. Prep time. Nothing tricky here. Peel & roughly chop the onions & garlic. Put in your large pan. Finely chop the root ginger & de-seed & snip up the chiilles with scissors. Add to pan. Now peel & core the pears & roughly chop those. Add to pan, followed by all the other ingredients. That's it!

Now bring the pan to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Put the lid on & simmer for about 45 mins until the pears & onions are soft & mushy. Give it a quick stir every now & again just to check it isn't sticking. It shouldn't do, but if this did happen, you can just stir in half a mug of water.

Remove pan from heat & using your stick blender, zizz the mixture up until smooth, when it will look like this.

 Now stand a sieve over a large bowl & ladle the mixture into it. Work it through with a spatula or large spoon.

This will need doing in batches. As your bowl starts to fill with lovely smooth sauce, transfer it to a large jug ready for bottling. The little bit of fruit/veggie fibres left in the sieve at the end can go on the compost or in the bin, they're not required.

Remove your hot clean jars from the oven & fill them with the sauce. Wipe the rims of the jars with a hot clean cloth & pop the lids on.

By rights, the filled jars should now be sterilized by standing them in a pan of water on a folded tea towel & bringing to the boil for a set amount of time. I don't do this myself, because this sauce doesn't tend to last all that long in our house, mostly because I don't think there's actually anything that the Resident Sauce Hoover wouldn't eat it on, but if you were wanting to store it for longer than about 3 months or so, you should really do the sterilizing process, which you can find in any instructions for bottling. Oh, & keep it in the fridge once it's been opened.

It's fab on hot dogs, burgers, cheese on toast, chicken drumsticks, pulled pork, veggie sausages, you name it, & I've also used it spread over the bases when making pizzas. I'm thinking this is a good year for pears. I tried to offload some on a neighbour this week & she didn't need any because her pear tree is also laden, so if you have a glut yourself, or can scrounge some, do give this sauce a try. You can easily half the recipe if you would rather make just a few jars.

Well, I must sign out now, & go & see what's happening in the garden. Whatever it is, it seems to be involving a lot of loud shouty yowling & thoughtless crashing of felines through what's left of my rudbeckia & cosmos plants.
Bye for now,
C x
P.S For AW fans......here he is on his new blanket, knitted by a friend up in North Yorkshire.