Spiced Red Wine Poached Pears Recipe - 2 Ways
Perfectly spiced red wine, honey, and cinnamon poached pears with a mulled wine poached pears variation.
Served with a generous dollop of vanilla ice cream, crème fraiche or whipped cream for extra sweet indulgence. The perfect poached pears recipe made simple.
Poached pears are perfect for any season but something about winter just makes them so much better. Digging into a sweet red wine spiced pear whilst watching a cheesy hallmark Christmas movie. There’s nothing better.
Easy red wine poached pears
These poached pears may look like some gourmet fine dining dessert but they are super simple to make. From start to finish they take around 30 minutes with just a handful of ingredients and steps.
Not to down play them but it’s basically whipping up a syrup and letting pears sit in it.
One great thing about these is you can keep them macerating in the syrup for up to 4 days. So you can make one large batch and eat them every night for the next 4 days if you so wish. Each one getting more and more flavour.
Personally, I think they are better after one night of infusing so I never have them the same day. I always prep them the night before.
One dessert - Two recipes
The basics of poaching pears in red wine syrup is to infuse the syrup with different spices. Which is what mulled wine basically is.
So as well as adding my Spiced red wine poached pears recipe, I’ve also added a mulled wine poached pears recipe. Something that much more festive for this Christmas season.
Use whichever recipe you prefer. The mulled wine poached pears recipe has less ingredients which is always a plus. Less to think about, less to buy.
But you have more control over the spiced red wine poached pears. You can taste as you go along and add/take away whatever you want.
Which red wine should I use for poached pears?
Before we jump into this recipe lets just cover which red wine to use because the options are endless.
The truth is, we will be vastly changing the flavour of the wine by sweeting and adding spices. So it doesn’t really matter.
I’ve never understood why people would use pricy red wine for cooking. Just grab the cheapest bottle you can.
But what if there are a lot of wines at the same price? In that case grab whichever one you prefer. The popular option is to go for a Shiraz or a Merlot. These red wines tend to be very fruity in flavour which work perfectly with the pears and sweetening.
However, I prefer to use a more robust wine. In my poached pears recipe I use a cabernet sauvignon. It’s a wine that still has a fruitiness but with some spicy notes which I like with my pears.
But like I said, it’s completely up to you. You can check out some of my wine guides here to learn a bit more about popular wines to help you decide what your favourite is.
Recipe variations
Once you’ve made your poached pears once you will be able to change the recipe, take away or add anything you want to suit your own taste.
For more ideas on what to add check out my flavour guide and see which ingredients will pair well with whatever you have in mind.
Red wine spiced poached pears with step by step instructions and photos
Below is a step by step with photos that you can refer to if you’re stuck with any of the steps. For the full recipe card, keep on scrolling to the bottom of this page.
1) Mix your red wine, water, sugar, honey, star anise and cinnamon together in a saucepan and slowly bring to a boil whilst stirring regularly.
You can opt to add more red wine and not use the water if you want more of that red wine flavour to come through if you prefer.
2) Whilst your syrup is heating up and the sugar dissolving, start peeling your pears with a vegetable peeler.
You will want to cut the base of the pears so they can stand up without falling over like in the photo below.
Remember, the above photo is to show how much to cut of the bottom. After this you also want to peel the entire pears.
3) Once your sugar has dissolved, drop your pears in the mix and simmer for 25-35 minutes. This will depend on the ripeness of your pears, after they have been poaching for 15 minutes give them a poke with a skewer every 5 minutes to check if they are done.
Your pear’s might be perfectly soft after just 15 minutes, some pears may need 30 minutes longer. So it’s important to keep checking how they are coming along.
You want them to be nice and soft, the skewer should easily pierce through the pear.
4) Take your pears out and strain out any bits from your red wine syrup. Put your now strained syrup back on the heat and bring the syrup to a boil, simmer until the syrup has reduced by half.
5) At this point you can serve your pears as they are with a drizzle of your reduced red wine syrup over the top.
Or you can do what I prefer, which is to lay the pears flat in a container, poke holes all over them, pour the syrup over the top and refrigerate them overnight.
The syrup will leak into the holes you’ve poked and infuse your pears with more of that red wine sweetness overnight.
6) To serve, stand your pear up on a plate and drizzle some of the red wine syrup over the top. Dollop a spoon of ice cream, crème fraiche or whipped cream on the side. Sprinkle with a small amount of cinnamon for extra spice and voila!
Spiced Red Wine Poached Pears
Ingredients
Instructions
- Mix everything apart from the pears into a saucepan and slowly bring to a boil whilst stirring regularly.
- Whilst your mix is heating up and the sugar dissolving, start peeling your pears with a vegetable peeler. You will want to cut the base of the pears so they can stand up without falling over.
- Once your sugar has dissolved, drop your pears in the mix and simmer for 25-35 minutes. This will depend on the ripeness of your pears, after they have been poaching for 15 minutes give them a poke with a skewer every 5 minutes to check if they are done. You want them to be nice and soft, the skewer should easily pierce through the pear.
- Take your pears out and strain any bits from your red wine syrup. Bring the syrup back up to a boil and simmer until the syrup has reduced by half.
- At this point you can serve your pears as they are with a drizzle of your reduced red wine syrup over the top, or, what I prefer is to lay my pears flat in a container, poke holes all over them, pour the syrup over the top and refrigerate them overnight for extra flavour infusion.
Notes
Top tip
Serve your poached pears with a generous dollop of crème fraiche, cream, or vanilla ice cream for ultimate yum-factor.
Mulled wine poached pears
See below for my recipe on mulled wine poached pears
Nutrition Facts
Calories
669.19Fat
0.89Sat. Fat
0.09Carbs
141.94Fiber
12.29Net carbs
129.66Sugar
116.82Protein
1.9Sodium
15.98Cholesterol
0The nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
Mulled wine poached pears recipe
Ingredients
450ml Mulled wine
100grams Honey
4 Pears
Method
This is the same process as the above recipe. However, instead of adding all those spices to our red wine we will use already mulled red wine. Because we will be using mulled wine, it also means we can cut down on the sugar added. So for this recipe we'll only be using 100grams of honey.
In a saucepan mix your mulled wine and honey, bring to just before a boil whilst stirring to dissolve your honey.
Drop your pears in and repeat the above recipe method. Simmering for 25-35 minutes, then serving.
If you want to make your own mulled wine, check out my ultimate mulled wine recipe here. That way you will have your own mulled wine poached pears, and enough mulled wine to get your through the winter season/last minute Christmas gifts.
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