Sugar, cinnamon, spice and all things nice. These are the things that mulled wine is made of. Making mulled wine is a fun old tradition and not as hard as you would think.
The first thing to do before you start is to get the ingredients. The recipe calls for the following:
– 1 bottle of red wine
– 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
– 1 stick of cinnamon
– 4 whole cloves
– 1 orange sliced into rounds
– 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
There are many more variations but this is a classic and simple recipe that works well. Once you have your ingredients, cut a hole in the orange and use it as a squeezer to squeeze the juice into the pot with the rest of the ingredients. You will notice that I didn’t mention any specific amounts for anything aside from the wine. This is because it’s really easy to just throw in more if you need it so there is no need to try to be exact. The only thing really worth noting is that if you use too much sugar it will counteract some of the spiciness and reduce the flavor. Now that you have your ingredients it’s time to start heating them up! The first step is getting them simmering on low heat. As they begin
Mulled wine is one of the great winter warmers. The spices give it a delicious aroma, and having a warm drink in your hand can really help on cold days.
The basic recipe is:
8 parts red wine
1 part sugar (or to taste)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2-3 cloves
Place the red wine in a saucepan with the sugar and spices. Bring it to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it sit for 5 more minutes before serving.
Trouble is, that’s not really mulled wine. That’s just heated red wine with a bit of spice in it. So here’s what you do to make real mulled wine:
First, get some good quality wine. Cheap wine won’t taste good once it’s been heated up this way! I like to use a rich-tasting red such as Shiraz or Zinfandel. Avoid white wines, as they tend to be too sweet with this recipe.
For each 750 ml bottle of wine, add:
1/4 cup brown sugar (or to taste)
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1-2 cloves (optional)
Heat all the ingredients in a saucepan until
Mulled wine is a great winter drink. It’s easy to make, it’s warm and hearty and festive, and it has just enough alcohol to give you a pleasant little buzz without making you sloppy.
You can buy mulling spice at the supermarket, but making your own is more funand you can better customize the flavors. The basic mulling spice mix is a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and clove. You can add any other spices you like; ginger and allspice are especially nice.
In addition to spices, you’ll need brown sugar or honey to sweeten it (or both), some citrus peel (oranges or lemons), and some dry red wine. And while you’re at it, throw in a few whole cloves and possibly a stick of cinnamon for good measure.
Here’s how: Start with a couple of oranges or lemons. Wash them, cut them into slices about 1/4-inch thick, and remove any seeds or pith from the slices. Put the slices into a large pot with water to cover them by about an inch and bring them to a boil for about 10 minutes; this will help release the oils from the peels into the water. Then take out the citrus
There are two reasons why you might want to mull wine:
1. To heat it. Wine is a drink for all seasons, but there is something particularly satisfying about sipping it in winter. One reason is the warmth; another is the contrast with the cold weather outside. Mulled wine, which also contains spices, has an extra dimension: fragrant steam that tickles your nose and makes you sneeze.
2. To add flavour. Alcohol tastes less alcoholic when it’s warm, so if you make your wine more alcoholic, then warming it will make it taste milder again. That’s a simple example of the kind of thing that can be done by any cook who knows how to control temperature in a liquid.
This is a mulled wine recipe – and it can be made in less than 15 minutes!
The most important thing to remember is that you want a drink of the right strength, not one that will knock your socks off. This is why I have suggested using only 2 pouches of the fruit tea. If you are serving this at a party, use more and keep topping up as you serve it.
Some people simply leave their wine to simmer for longer and consequently have a really heavy red wine to drink. So be careful!
The other thing to remember is not to add ALL the ingredients at once. It should simmer gently for about 10 minutes before you add the fruit and spices, otherwise it can go all frothy on top, like a glass of Ribena!
And finally, if you are going to be serving this after dinner, let people help themselves – don’t sit there half the night stirring it!
Mulled wine is one of the best winter drinks around. But it’s also one of the most dangerous. It can turn out sour or weak, and if you use too many spices, you’ll get a bitter stew instead of a drink.
This recipe solves those problems by using different wines for different purposes. A cheap white wine adds flavor; a sweeter wine adds alcohol; and a strong red wine adds body.
Long before there were wineries, people discovered that heat drives flavor out of wine. The longer heat cooks wine, the more flavor gets driven off. So cooking with wine is kind of like working with double-stranded DNA: heat drives off some strands, but it keeps another strand intact.
But if you’re careful to cook with wine just long enough to drive off some but not all of its flavor, then you’ll get something much stronger than either the original wine or its cooked version.
The first step is to make the mulling spices into a syrup. Put two cups water in a pot over medium heat, and add two cinnamon sticks, a teaspoon each of cloves and ginger powder (or dried ginger root), and a half cup sugar.
Cooking is a creative act. It is more like art than science, because the “facts” are not clear, the recipes are only approximate, and there are no single right answers. So you have to be an artist to cook well.
The time-honored way to become a good cook is to apprentice yourself to someone who is already good. But if you’re impatient and you want to learn quickly, this idea can be hard to swallow. I’ve tried it myself and it didn’t work for me. I couldn’t get past the belief that my teacher knew something I didn’t, so I kept thinking I could do it better faster if I just tried harder. And of course he did know something I didn’t — how to make things taste good — but what took him years to learn took me years longer, because of the way my brain was wired.
I think creativity is like that in other fields too: the people who go directly from zero knowledge to amazing results get a lot of attention as “natural talents”. But they must be natural talents at learning whatever technique they use. (Or else they aren’t really achieving much on their own.)