Something wide and heavy-based that holds more than you think you’ll need. Mulled wine for six to eight people is two or three bottles plus juice, fruit and spices, and a normal 20cm saucepan is full to the brim before you’ve even added the oranges. Then it catches on the bottom, or you ladle it out and slop it down the side.
Pan or slow cooker?
People swear by the slow cooker for this, and it does keep mulled wine at a steady low heat for hours. The catch is speed. It can take well over an hour to get a few bottles properly warm from cold, and plenty of slow cookers top out at around 6 litres. A big pan on the hob gets you there in 20 minutes, and you can still turn it right down once it’s hot. If guests are arriving at seven and you’re only starting at half six, the pan wins.
What kind of pan
Stainless steel inside, a thick base and plenty of room. Mulled wine is acidic and sits on the heat for ages, so you don’t want a worn non-stick coating or bare aluminium, which can leave a slightly metallic taste. And it should never boil. Boiling cooks off the alcohol and turns cloves and cinnamon bitter, so a base that spreads heat evenly, rather than scorching one spot over the flame, really helps.
A HaWare 10L stock pot ticks those boxes. According to the listing, the inside is uncoated 18/10 stainless steel and the tri-ply base has an aluminium core sandwiched in the middle, so the aluminium never touches the wine. It works on induction as well as gas, electric and ceramic. There’s a glass lid with a steam hole, so you can watch for bubbles without letting the smell escape, and measuring marks on the inside, which saves faffing about with a jug. It’s 25.4cm across and 20cm deep.
Ten litres sounds like a lot, and for a normal Tuesday it is. But the same pot does a big batch of soup, a ham, stock from the turkey carcass on Boxing Day, or enough chilli to freeze for January. If you only ever warm one bottle at a time, don’t bother. Your biggest saucepan will do.
A rough recipe for a crowd
- Three bottles of fruity red. Nothing expensive, but nothing you wouldn’t drink cold either.
- About 500ml of apple juice or orange juice to soften it.
- Two oranges, sliced, one of them studded with cloves.
- Two or three cinnamon sticks and a couple of star anise.
- Sugar or honey to taste. Start with less than you think and add more at the end.
Lid on, lowest heat, 20 to 30 minutes, and keep tasting. Leave it on the lowest setting while people help themselves with a ladle. Anything left over can go in a good insulated flask for a walk the next day, if that’s your sort of thing.
