Wine poached Pears

Link to printable version

For Halloween, we decided to do wine poached pears ! Ok, we know it isn't a Halloween classic but we thought the deep red colour of the pears looks almost blood-like (and with some whipped cream, we even achieved this brain-like look in our serving glasses). Spooky !

Wine poached pears are a traditional dessert from the Burgundy vineyards in eastern France, more specifically, the Beaujolais province. In French, we would call this dessert "Poires à la Beaujolaise", and we would poach them specifically with Beaujolais wine, however, you may use any wine of your personal preference for this recipe. 

This dessert can come in handy because it has the advantage of being prepared the day before, on top of being super easy. The trick is to get pears that are not ripe. This is important because if your pears are already very ripe, they will get soft and mushy, while you want them to hold their shape and stand up themselves.

We will only do 4 pears here, however, you can probably get up to 6 pears depending on the size of your saucepan. You can also keep the spiced wine, reheat it slowly for poaching a second batch of pears the day after, or simply strain the wine and drink it (heat it up a little bit for extra mulled wine goodness) !

The whipped cream is totally optional here, and for more convenience, you can substitute the handmade cream for canned whipped cream. We would advise you not to choose sweetened whipped cream because the wine sauce is already sweet. 

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30 minutes

30 - 40 minutes + 24h resting time

4

Ingredients

For the spiced wine :
750 ml of red wine
1 organic orange
150 grams of sugar
2 tablespoons of clear honey
Half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon
2 cloves
1 star anise
1 vanilla pod

For the pears :
4 pears
- Conference or Williams pears, not too ripe -

For the decoration (optional) :
250 milliliter of heavy cream

Bakeware :
Large saucepan
Optional : Piping bag

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Start with the wine

>> Pour the wine in a large saucepan, make sure the saucepan is large enough to hold 4 pears, and place on the stove over low heat.
>> Wash your orange carefully, peal the skin of half the orange and cut two thick slices.
>> Add the skin and the slices of orange in the wine.
>> Once your wine is warm add the sugar and honey and wait until the sugar dissolves.
>> Add the half teaspoon of ground cinnamon, the 2 cloves, and the star anise to the wine. Slice the vanilla pod to empty all the vanilla beans in the wine and place the empty vanilla pod in the wine.

Peel the pears
>> Start peeling your whole pears. Keep the stalks as shown the pictures.
>> Slice the bottom of your pears so the bottom is flat and they can stand.

Poach the pears

>> Put the pears in the wine and poach them for 30 to 40 minutes depending on how ripe your pears are. If your pears are quite ripe, reduce the poaching time so they don't end up too soft.
>> After 20 minutes, don't forget to turn the pears around so they poach evenly.
>> Once they're poached, leave in the wine, cover them with cling film ( the cling film should touch the surface of the pears ) and place them in a fridge over night. This stage is important because this is how you will get the maximum infused flavor in your pears.

Decoration time !

>> The next day, whip your heavy cream. The secret for infallible whipped cream is to have your cream very cold (place it in the freezer for 10 minutes) along with the whipper and the bowl.
>> Once whipped, place your cream in a pipping bag with a star shaped nozzle. Pipe it in your presentation bowls.
>> Take your pears off the wine, and place them in the center of your whipped cream. Add a tablespoon of wine over the pears right before serving.