Pears and Apples for Winter

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   Before you start, gather your ingredients. Wash the apples and pears well to remove any dirt. Try to choose firm, unblemished fruit—if it's too soft, it'll cook down into mush. Pick the most fragrant pears you can find.

2. Step 2:

   

   Peel the washed apples and pears, quarter them, and remove the cores. Then dice all the pieces.

3. Step 3:

   

   Put the cut fruit into your pot. Use an enameled, glass, or stainless-steel pot—not aluminum, so the fruit doesn't react with the metal.

4. Step 4:

   

   Cover the prepped fruit with the sugar. It's best not to add it all at once—gauge it by how sweet the fruit is, which always varies. If you over-sweeten it, there's no fixing it afterward. Let the sugared fruit sit for a few hours at room temperature so it releases its juice.

5. Step 5:

   

   The fruit will give off plenty of juice. Set the pot over the heat and bring it to a boil. Simmer a couple of minutes, then turn it off. Cover with a lid and let it cool.

6. Step 6:

   

   Then bring it back to a boil and add a little citric acid. Why citric acid? It acts as a preservative and keeps the jam from crystallizing. Simmer a couple more minutes. Cooking in two rounds with a cooling break in between gives you the thickest syrup without boiling all the vitamins out of the fruit the way one long cook would—and the fruit pieces stay whole.

7. Step 7:

   

   Sterilize your jars however you like. Ladle the boiling-hot fruit into the jars and seal with lids—I usually just rinse the lids with boiling water. Turn the jars upside down, wrap them in a blanket, and let them cool that way. Wrapped up like this, the jars cool very slowly and, so to speak, come into their own: the syrup thickens and the fruit softens.

8. Step 8:

   

   Come winter, it's so nice to open up a jar of these pears and apples. Enjoy!