Manolo for the Big Girl

Ah mulled wine, the festive way to get boozy during the holidays. This is one of those great recipes where you just throw things into a slow-cooker and then get slowly cooked yourself.

Mulled Wine

1 magnum (2 bottles) decent red table wine, moderately dry
2 quarts unsweetened apple cider
1 piloncillo (Mexican cane sugar, if unavailable add 1/2 cup dark brown sugar)
1 cup pomegranate juice (or 1/3 cup pomegranate molasses)
jewels from one pomegranate
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 whole orange, sliced into rings
6 cinnamon sticks
1 hand ginger, about 4 inches long –more if you like it spicier– chopped
small handful of some variation of the following: cloves, peppercorns, allspice berries, star anise
pinch salt (really)

Directions: Add all ingredients except wine in slow cooker turned on high until simmering. Add wine, let simmer again. Reduce heat to low. Cover and stir occasionally. Serve out of the slow-cooker or if you’re being fancy, drain it.

Leftover wine can be used for:

Viking Sangria

Mix equal parts chilled mulled wine with ginger ale. Add a shot of aquavit if the spirit (see what I did there?) moves you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 6:11 pm by Plumcake and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.