COOKING WITHOUT WINE OR BEER

Photo by Ika Dam on unsplash

What if you don’t drink alcoholic beverages, for whatever reason, and the ingredient list on the recipe for coq au vin includes 1/4 cup brandy and 1/2 bottle red wine? Or, a few minutes in, the risotto recipe says, “toss in one glassful of dry white wine”? Or, to make the batter for an “authentic” fish and chips, you’ll require a bottle of beer?

Many people - including those who cook and eat - don’t drink for reasons of health, or religion or culture, or because they don’t want to feed the coq au vin sauce to the baby.

Just as I used to find many ingredients in non-Western cooking not only out of my league but also out of my pantry, I suspect that many cooks new to this country find it difficult to use wine, beer, spirits or liqueurs to make many a Western preparation.

So, sadly, they just avoid cooking that way.

And there is the matter of caution. I know folks who eat vegan or vegetarian who blanch - to use a cooking term in a second meaning - if they discover that a spoon or spatula that prepared their food merely touched a bit o’ beef. I respect their blanchedness.

It’s a common assumption that the heat of cooking rids a dish of any alcohol introduced into it. That’s only partially true.

According to the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, 75 percent of the original alcohol by volume of the liquid used, for instance, will remain in a flambéed dessert; 25 percent, in a dish that has been simmered or braised for one hour; and five percent in the same dish after two and a half hours. (Those percentages for braising are guaranteed if the pot has been covered while cooking, the norm.)

Those numbers won’t work for a lot of folk.

I’ve been preparing many recipes for months now substituting completely alcohol-free liquids for the same quantities of beer or wine, both red and white. (I don’t cook much with spirits or liqueurs so I haven’t, for example, had to pull a shot of espresso to sub out for “2 teaspoons Kahlua.”)

Except for a wee worry, once in awhile, to adjust a recipe allowing for higher levels of sweetness in the liquids that I’ve used, the substitutions have worked very well indeed. I counter the added sugar, for taste mostly, with a small amount of acidity (a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of rice vinegar).

It helped to think about what role any wine or beer played in an original recipe. It added flavor, of course, but also the very important crispness of fruity acidity or carbonation. So, I sought out fruit juices or other beverages that mimed those same qualities.

You will find online many charts about non-alcoholic liquid substitutes in cooking. I certainly haven’t tried them all, but I’ll tell you what has worked well for my cooking after trying many different sorts of juices or liquids.

- For red wine, cup for cup, I use R. W. Knudsen’s “Just Tart Cherry” juice. It’s a splendid proxy and no person at my table for whom I’ve cooked a boeuf bourguignon or oxtail stew could guess that I didn’t use red wine.

- For white wine, in equal measure, I’ve had great luck with “light” (lower sugar level) apple juice or, in a pinch, regular apple juice. It’s pretty interesting how cold apple juice smells just like a Mosel riesling - or is it the other way around?

- And get this: add a teaspoon of malted milk powder to sparkling apple juice or low-sugar-level ginger ale and you’ll swear you’re in beer country. Ergo, “beer” batter success, including the bubbles.

Pears “poached in wine”—but tart cherry juice’ll do!

RECIPE: Poached and glazed pears (Using either red wine or fruit juice)
Makes 4

Ingredients
4 pears (Bosc, Anjou, Bartlett, or other), peeled just before cooking, stems intact
2 cups red wine or 100% tart cherry juice (see note)
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice and zest from 1 lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 sticks cinnamon
3 green cardamom pods
12 whole black peppercorns

Directions
In a steep pot, mix together the wine, water, sugar, lemon juice and zest, the vanilla and the cinnamon, cardamom and peppercorns. Bring to a boil and add the pears, reducing the heat to a bare simmer. Cover the pears with a circle of parchment paper and, if you have either, a “spider” or perforated skimmer that fits into the pan and can stand the simmer. You want the pears to be submerged completely so that they take on the color of the poaching liquid.

Cook for 30 minutes. When the blade of a thin knife enters the fruit easily, remove the pan from the heat and let cool. Carefully remove the pears from the pan, strain the spices and flavorings from the liquid and reduce the liquid to a syrup (about 1 cup). Serve the pears at room temperature or cool, as you wish, glazed with the syrup.

Note: If preparing this without wine or other alcohol and using 100 percent tart cherry juice, reduce the amount of sugar to 3/4 cup.