Feuerzangenbowle is a traditional German alcoholic punch, similar to Glühwein. They sell it at Weihnachtsmarkts but there's usually only 1-2 booths selling it as opposed to 10-20 selling Glühwein. It consists of warm spiced wine with a sugar cone suspended above it. The sugar cone is soaked in rum (with a minimum of 54% alcohol) and lit on fire so that it melts and caramelizes and drips into the wine. The fun part is that the more rum you add, the higher the flame goes. And in the end it all tastes amazing - I like it better than Glühwein. It's spicier and sweeter and much more palatable, in my opinion.
Last night we went to a friend's house for dinner and they had a feuerzangenbowle set so they made it for us. The process starts with some warm red wine with cloves, cinnamon, star anise, and oranges in it. Here is Christian warming up this concoction on the stove:
Here is the set, which consists of a pot filled with the spiced wine, tea lights underneath it to keep it warm, a metal grate to go over the top of it for the sugar cone to rest on, and a ladle to pour rum over the sugar cone and later to scoop out the wine with. And the sugar cone you just buy at the grocery store, they sell them here special just for Feuerzangenbowle:
Here some rum has already been poured onto the sugar cone and it's being lit on fire. As it burns, you continue to pour rum over it until you've emptied the bottle. Below are many pictures of the process as it's a fun 10 minutes or so:
Then once all the sugar has melted you get to spend the rest of the evening drinking it.
No comments:
Post a Comment