Poached Pears
These tender and succulent poached pears are perfect with ice cream or sorbet. The pears are simple to make and beautifully absorb the poaching flavors.
Ingredients
- 1 bottle fruity white wine or use red
- 1 bottle pear juice (32 oz) or pomegranate (to be used with red wine)
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ vanilla bean
- 1 star anise
- 6 whole peppercorns
- 4 whole cloves
- 6-8 whole pears, peeled and cored underripe is best
Instructions
- Place all of the ingredients in a large pot and simmer on medium low heat, uncovered. I made the mistake of covering poached pears and they boiled away and became mushy. The trick is to go slowly. Depending on how hard your pears are this can take 45 minutes-2 hours.
- Flip the pears around gently with a spoon to make sure they are cooking evenly every 20 minutes.
- Once they are taking on color you should start to check them for tenderness. With a fork poke inside the pear, where you cored it. You don’t want to see the fork marks on the outside. Once they are tender and the fork slides ino the flesh of the pear easily they are done. You still want to have some bite to the pear so don’t make them mushy, like canned pears.
- Once the pears are finished then turn up the heat slightly and reduce the poaching liquid until it resembles thick maple syrup. Serve the syrup with the pear or over ice cream.