Fill your home with the smells of Autumn with a steamy cup of naturally sweetened, homemade wassail.
*This post was also seen on Pressure Cooking Today, where we contribute.
Hey everybody! This is Marci, bringing you a recipe that is sure to fill you with excitement and good memories. My most endearing sights and smells are all experienced in the Fall. Saying goodbye to summer is just fine by me when I can feel the cool breeze coming through my windows and see the mountains that surround my home covered in orange, red, and yellow. I feel giddy just thinking about it! And the smells of Fall? Sigh…they instantly take me to a happy place. Cinnamon, pumpkin, clove, apple, nutmeg, etc, etc.
Wassail is the ultimate culmination of all of these wonderful smells. The smell of wassail still brings me memories of the before trick or treating excitement. However, as a child, when people talked about all the wonderful spices that were in wassail, I somehow interpreted that to mean it was spicy (in a hot sauce kind of way), and I don’t believe I ever even tried wassail until I was an adult! What a shame! But not really, I made up for it with lots of warm cups of hot chocolate!
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Wassail is typically cooked in a slow cooker for several hours in order to develop all of the “spicy” flavors. But not in this case! Just 10 minutes at high pressure in the pressure cooker will have your wassail bursting with all the intense fall spices we all expect and demand. And if you purchase this mesh steamer basket all the inedible items are quick and easy to remove. (affiliate link)
Possibly the best part of this recipe is that moment when you release the pressure. I’m not kidding when I confess that I set the mood in anticipation for this moment. The kids got sent outside so I could have complete silence, I put my comfy pants on, set my phone to the side, and then…I flipped the valve and smiled as my house was instantly filled with the most delightful citrusy, spicy, apple-y, HEAVENLY smell known to mankind. No candle, will ever hold a candle, to that perfect scent. Simple pleasures are the best kind, right?
So go ahead and buy that humongous jug of fresh apple cider that is popping up in grocery stores everywhere. It’s Fall, it’s October, it’s Halloween and that means it’s wassail time!
Enjoy!
Marci
- 8 cups apple cider
- 4 cups orange juice
- 5 cinnamon sticks
- 10 cloves
- ½ tsp nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
- zest and juice of 2 lemons
- 1 inch ginger, peeled
- 2 vanilla bean, split
- Pour apple cider and orange juice into the pressure cooker pot. Place mesh steamer basket inside. Add cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, zest and juice of lemons, ginger and vanilla beans to the basket. Secure the lid and turn pressure release knob to a sealed position. Cook at high temperature for 10 minutes.
- When cooking is complete, use a 10 minute natural release.
- Remove the steamer basket and discard its contents. Serve wassail hot from the pot. To keep the wassail warm and your house smelling amazing, turn the pressure cooker to warm or low slow cook setting.
*This post contains affiliate links for products I genuinely use and love. Thank you for supporting this blog!
This recipe looks wonderful! I’ve just clicked on the steamer basket and have a question for you: the photo on Amazon shows that it has two handles but I don’t see them in your photos. Did the link take me to the right place? If so, do the handles fold away or are they removable? THANKS!
Christine, Sorry! I forgot to mention that I bent them off so they would fit inside. I bought it so long ago I forgot I had even done that!