Learn to make Finnish Glögi for Christmas

Christmas is coming very soon !!! Have you have any new idea about hot drink for winter time? You can try to make Glögi, the traditional Finnish warm drink in winter and Christmas. This traditional drink is tasty and healthy and little bit same style with mulled wine. I usually buy a ready-made Glögi but this winter I made it for myself. I thought it is difficult to make Glögi but it is very easy to make. Here is how I make Glögi for this Christmas.

Glögi recipe

The traditional recipe for Finnish Glögi includes 5 main ingredients:

-        Dried orange peels

-        Cloves

-        Cinnamon

-        Dried ginger

-        Black currant juices

You can make Glögi with these main ingredients. But I will make Glögi with little more complicated recipe for this year. The ingredients I use are popular and you can find them in everywhere. My ingredients include:

-        1 orange, 1 lemon

-        4 or 5 slice of fresh ginger

-        8 cloves

-        2 sticks of cinnamon

-        4 cardamom seeds (optional)

-        1,5 l of black currant juice ( you can use red grape juice too)

-        2 anise (optional)

-        2 or 3 spoon of brown sugar (optional)

Before making Glögi you can spend some minute to do something:

-        Washed the orange and lemon then peel thin slices of the zest.

-        Squeeze the orange and lemon to use later

-        Press ginger if you want stronger ginger taste

-        Crush or press cardamom seeds

Cook slowly with low heat until the drink is steaming hot about 90oC. Do not let the drink get even close to boiling. Normally people can put all ingredients at the one time to make drink but I put ingredients steps by steps to have little bit complicated taste Glögi.

Step 1: Put cloves, cinnamon, cardamom seed with black currant juice to cook first. At this stage you can put 1 tsp. of dried raisins to make sweet taste to Glögi.

Step 2: After 9 minutes I put fresh ginger into the saucepan.

Step 3: Then put anise and fresh oranges and lemon zest into the bowl at 12 minutes. Depend on your taste, if you like stronger taste of anise you can put it before 12 minutes.

Step 4: At the 14 minutes I put oranges and lemon juices into the bowl. I put orange and lemon juice almost in the end to keep the vitamin and mineral in the juice. As after long time cooking the juice will loss vitamin and mineral so I have to put it in almost in the end.

Step 5: Stop cooking When the bowl little boiling at the 15 minutes. Pour the drink through a sieve and serve with raisins and blanched almonds. You can add brown sugar if you want sweet taste, but normally in black currant juice include sugar already so I don’t put it into my drink. My Glögi now smell good with thick and complicated taste.

  

Glögi with alcohol recipe

If you want to make Glögi with alcohol you can use the same ingredient but with alcohol:

-        1 orange, 1 lemon

-        4 or 5 slice of fresh ginger

-        8 cloves

-        2 sticks of cinnamon

-        4 cardamom seeds

-        1 l of black currant juice (you can use red grape juice too)

-        2 anise

-        0,5 l of red wine

At the beginning you can do alcohol Glögi in the same way as the recipes above. But in the step 5 before stop cooking you can pour red wine into Glögi. After 1 or 2 minutes you can stop cooking. The wine flavor maybe affected by boiling as Alcohol start to evaporate for less than 80oC.

Alcohol Glögi is meant to be enjoyed hot but not boiling hot. If you want to enjoy more alcohol you can reduce the amount of black currant juice and adding more wine. But make sure that the red wine be warm for a short time. Some people can add some vodka before serving, but maybe it is too strong for me.

Notices:

• One thing you should notice when making Glögi is do not use kettle, aluminum or copper saucepans. I only use stainless steel saucepan to make Glögi as aluminum and copper is not good to the health

• You also should not cook Glögi with aluminum pan as the acidity of the drink can be removed in heating aluminum.
• If you cook Glögi by kettle it might be dangerous as acidic drink can corrode copper kettle. The kettle copper resistors may be covered by a steel plate. The acidity resistance can dissolve copper into Glögi. So the kettle must not be used for purposes other than boiling water. This is also a reason for not using copper saucepans for Glögi. Copper dissolution of the drink can cause copper poisoning. You might have symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea and malaise. The symptoms can be extremely harmful to the elderly.

This is how I make Glögi for this Christmas and winter. This recipe is easy to make within 15 minutes. Pay little more effort you will have very tasty and healthy drink for this Christmas and winter holidays. I wish your Christmas be filled with special moment, warmth, peace and happiness.

Happy holidays and seasons greeting! Hyvää Joulua!!! Chúc Mừng Giáng Sinh