I made these rather wonderful easy poached pears without wine today when we had guests for lunch. I thought I’d see if I could frugalise the recipe. I have described these as with no alcohol, although I realise that the process of simmering a wine based poaching stock down to a syrup would boil off the alcohol anyway
How To Frugalise Poached Pears
Poached pears are usually simmered in a red or white wine and water syrup. Wine being the obviously most expensive ingredient, the usual alcohol was replaced in this easy poached pears recipe with value apple juice which costs just 11p (the pink tinge in the image came from a tiny bit of red wine in the bottom of a bottle). Using wine would bump up the cost considerably
Poached pears in white wine are less common than poached pears in red wine. Each wine bringing its own variation. I hadn’t tried poached pears in apple juice before, but I’m very glad I did!
I’ve reduced the sugar to 15g to cut down the carbs a bit too, and I think that the sugar could probably be dispensed with altogether, juice being quite sweet already. Other than that, the ingredients are just lemon juice and a couple of spices. The spices used are vanilla extract, cardamom pods and cinnamon. I changed cinnamon stick to ground cinnamon. The cardamom is nice, but far from essential. I would recommend using the vanilla if not the other 2 spices even if it is just vanilla poached pears, which are still gorgeous by the way!
What are Easy Poached Pears Like?
Really, seriously, good! The apple juice and lemon juice combined gives a wine flavour once reduced down to a gorgeous syrup. I would definitely serve these at a dinner party, feeling no need to mention their frugal credentials
Serve your lovely easy poached pears simply on their own, with the luscious syrup drizzled over.
Or gild the lily by adding a dollop of ice cream, a trickle of cream, a spoon of creme fraiche or a little thick Greek yogurt
Variations for Easy Poached Pears
Use grape juice, red or white, or cranberry juice (I’d leave out the lemon juice if using the sharp juice of cranberries) . Red wine is the traditional cooking liquid, or use white wine.
To make your poached pears into Poire Helene, melt some dark chocolate and drizzle over, or cover the pears completely with the chocolate. Yummy!
I am going to try this recipe using apples too, as I’m sure they will be fab. You’d want to use the kind of apples that stay firm, not something like a Bramley that cooks to a fluff
These gingery soy sharp apples could also be made with pears
Ingredients
- 200 ml apple juice
- 3 tblsp lemon juice
- 15 g sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 3 cardomom pods
- 1 tsp vanilla extract ASDA Extra Special Madagascan Vanilla Extract
- 4 pears
Instructions
- Peel the pears, leave the stalk on
- In a large saucepan, place all the ingredients
- Cover the pan and simmer the pears for about 15 minutes until soft and tender
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the pears and set to one side
- Boil the cooking liquid until it is reduced to a sticky sauce
- Put the pears in a serving dish, trickle over the sauce and chill until required
Equipment Needed
do you use the PrintFriendly button? That gives you the option of clicking on anything that you don’t want to print and it will be removed
This looks lovely apart from the vanilla( yuk). I have printed off a couple of your recipes today and one thing that really bugs me is when I have to print more than 1 sheet of paper, except if it is a long recipe with lots of ingredients. any chance of trying to be more frugal on this front?
Christian, I have made this recipe several times and they really don’t need to be submerged. I lay the pears on their side and they cook through beautifully
Maybe I am misunderstanding this but you want us to poach four pears in less than a 1 cup of juice? They won’t even be submerged. Please explain
Fab! Glad you liked them
Lovely we had this tonight. We are not drinking now and missed poached pears in wine. These are beautiful. Thanks so much.
I had to google seckel pears! The ginger sounds great 🙂
I just wanted to share that we made this for our New Years Eve dessert and it was divine! I happened to have seckel pears, and ran out of juice so it was part water. Also skipped the sugar. The flavor was still otherworldly! Devoured with a little vanilla ice cream and crumbled crystallized ginger on top. Thank you for sharing the recipe!
and sometimes to make a space between ads too, my pet dislike!
thanks for all the options on how to prepare this – very helpful – usually the chat on recipe sites is pure bubbly nonsense meant to fill space between beautiful photos.