This poached pear salad recipe is one of my favorite salads that I like to serve throughout the year. Pears are a great fruit to poach in a nice Burgundy red wine. The French often served poached pears in Burgundy red wine to be able to use the pears from their harvest that were not ripening to their liking. The red wine poached pear can be served as a dessert with some mascarpone cheese or vanilla ice cream. However, it can be a great addition to mixed greens. This salad can be served any season.
When picking pears to poach you should make sure they are ripe. The way to check if a pear is ripe is to apply a little pressure at the neck (the narrowest part of the pear by the stem).
Poaching the Pears
When poaching in red wine, Burgundy Red Wine is a neutral wine which means there aren’t many aromatics. The addition of the cinnamon sticks, cloves, and brown sugar enhances the flavor of the pear. When poaching the pear, the way to see if its ready it to poke one with a paring knife; if it meets no resistance, then the poaching process is complete. For a complete recipe see here.
Vinaigrette and Salad choices
What I like with the poached pear, there are a variety of ways to serve it. By adding the poached pears to spring mix and arugula greens, topped with my Balsamic Truffle Vinaigrette dressing, pomegranate seeds, blue cheese, orange and candied pecans make this is a perfect salad to serve with a nice bottle of red wine. Feel free to experiment with this salad. You can use different greens, different kinds of nuts and gorgonzola cheese. The beauty of this salad is that the poached pear is sweet you can also counter flavors by using bitter green such as radicchio.
Lastly, you can add some grilled shrimp, lobster, chicken, or steak to this poached pear salad if you want to make this a nice lunch or dinner entrée. There are so many options to suit everyone’s pallet. The goal of cooking is to experiment with ingredients and flavors in order to achieve desired taste. Feel free to have fun! That’s the best part of cooking.
Poached Pear Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette
Equipment
- (Help support our site!)Whisk
- (Help support our site!)Mixing Bowl
- (Help support our site!)Paring Knife
- (Help support our site!)Cutting Board
- (Help support our site!)Chefs Knife
Ingredients
- 6 cup Salad Spring Mix and Arugula
- 2 cups Kale Sliced
- 1 whole Red Wine Poached Pear See the How to Section
- ¼ cup Pomegranate Seeds See How To Section or Buy Ready
- 4 tbsp Blue Cheese Crumble
- ¼ cup Balsamic Truffle Vinaigrette See How To
- ½ cup Candy Pecans See the How to Section
- ¼ cup Orange Segments See the How to Section
Instructions
- Begin by slicing up kale and add to the spring arugula mix to the bowl.
- Core the pear by cutting all sides of poached pear and dice into cubes.
- Take orange segments and cut into dice. Place them into the bowl.
- Add the remaining ingredient: candied pecans, pomegranate seeds, blue cheese and white truffle vinaigrette into a bowl and mix.
- Add the Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing a little a time until you meet your desired level of dressing.
- Place on two individual plates, lettuce first add remainder ingredients on top of salad and serve.
