This aromatic dish directly brings the autumn and winter flavors to the table. Pears cooked in either wine or red currant juice, personalized with cinnamon, anise, cloves, ginger or cardamom. Within my family, we have this tradition of eating stewed pears as 4th course during the family Christmas Diner. My grandma always cooks the pears in red currant juice, whereafter she thickens the juice by letting it reduce and mixing it with cornstarch. However I love a red syrup with my stewed pears, so instead of cornstarch I reduce the sauce with extra sugar. Eat these pears with ice cream, in a cake, with custard or by itself.
* If you prefer to use less sugar, you can add just your preferred amount during the cooking process. Then let the cooking liquid reduce, and then add a mix of 1 tsp of cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons of cold water. Make sure you mix the cornstarch and water before adding it to the reduced cooking liquid.
Stewed Pears & Red Currant Juice
Equipment
- Cooking pan
Ingredients
- 1 kg Pears
- 250 ml Red Currant Juice
- One drop Red Food Coloring optional; just to make the pears extra red
- 250 ml Water
- 200 gram Sugar
- 1 Cinnamon Stick
- 2 Star Anise
Instructions
- Clean & peel the pears.
- Add the pears, red currant juice, water, coloring and spices to a cooking pan. Bring everything to a boil. Make sure the pears are just covered with liquid. Depending on your pan size, you may need to add some extra water.
- Cook the pears for 30-45 minutes on a low heat.
- Then remove the pears and let the syrup reduce until it has the consistency you like.
- Keep the pears in the cooled down syrup until you are going to use them.
- Serve the pears in the syrup. In for an even bigger party? Add ice cream or vanilla custard! [Happy days]