Post Punk Kitchen Forum

So my parents work a mobile pantry for our school district and they usually drop off some food at the end of it. Yesterday I got three full bags of pears and like 10 butternut squash. I know the squash will last for awhile in a cool dry place, but once the pears ripen, they will need to get used up.

Now my question is, can you dice up pears and freeze them? I thought maybe they could be added to smoothies or oatmeal. Just not sure if there is any prep needed in order to keep them fresh in the freezer, other then taking the skins off and dicing.

Any other ideas?

P.S. I think it is great that my parents finally took my hint, and stopped dropping by a bunch of whole chickens. Husband is sad about that though.

i don't think you need to do anything special to them before freezing if you don't care whether they hold their shape after they're thawed. as far as other ideas, one of the coffee shops near me sells vegan vanilla pear muffins, and they are awesome. or make a galette.

I thought this said pearls and then I thought it was spam. Pears makes much more sense! I say freeze away. Maybe you could puree the pears and then spoon the puree into ice cube trays and make little pear ice cubes for easy smoothie use later.

I'd make pear sauce! you can make a ton in a giant soup pot and freeze that. then you could use it in place of applesauce in recipes. you could also try stewing pear halves in fruit juice (which should help them keep their shape better than water) and then freezing them and they should be similar to canned pears, which i kind of love.

Yes! I came here to also suggest pear sauce!

If you are going to use them in smoothies the peel, core, cube routine is just fine. If you puree them en freeze the puree in popsicle molds with a little sweetener you get great whole food pear pops.

You could also can the pears as marmalade or chutney. This is my favorite pear cake. A pear galette sounds nice too.

I'm going to get myself some pears really soon!

And make sure to bake the pear frangipane tart from VPITS (and on the blog). It's bliss.

+1!

Good ideas. Thanks! I can probably do a little bit of everything, I have so many.

Beautiful salads! (Serendipitously, I had just bookmarked this!)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/07/magazine/pear-salad-recipes.html

I've made a good green smoothie (from a book) with frozen pear, banana, figs, spinach and water (to reach desired consistency).

Pear sauce! Pear sauce!

Make pear jam! Pears have natural pectin I think, so they wil gel up well if you cook them for a while.

I have once made a fantastic pear-tea-jam where you cook black-tea-bags with the jam in the beginning to infuse everything with the flavour of tea. It was a spectacular combination!

Pear sauce!

Make a big batch of walnut-pear muffins, and freeze them. Then you can take one out each night before bed, leave it out at room temperature, and eat it for breakfast.