COOKING WITH WINE
“I always cook with wine,” goes the joke. “Sometimes I even put some in the food.”
Using wine as a cooking liquid goes way back in culinary time. The West’s first “cookbook,” compiled in the first century, “De re coquinaria” (“On Cooking”), included dozens of recipes that use wine.
The Romans so fancied wine for cooking that they prepared a concentrate of grape must (unfermented grape juice) called defrutum, kept around the hearth and used both to color and sweeten foods. In the East, centuries of Japanese and Chinese cooks have made “wine” from fruits or rice and used these liquids in cooking.
The ways of wine in cooking are legion: to marinate, macerate, sauté, poach, boil, braise, stew, reduce or deglaze. Some cooks use wine for stir-fries, steaming or blanching. A splash of it straight out of the bottle is an added flavor in many a vinaigrette or cold sauce.
Cooks use wine instead of mere plain water because of the flavors that wine adds to dishes. But just as the four vinegars made from cider, sherry, red wine or white wine each differ one from the other, both in taste and in their effect on a dish, so do wines differ in what they add to—and very much how they affect—food preparations.
For example, wine adds acidity to sauces. Foods that have a level of acidity go better with wine than food that is flat. Acidity, in truth, “lifts” flavors in food, much the way salt lifts savor.
A careful cook, however, needs to consider the cooking preparation itself when utilizing wine. That same acidity, for example, could concentrate into an unwelcome tartness after boiling down a marinade into a sauce. So, likewise, would any sweetness in wine; too much can cloy.
And beware of distilling down the tannins in blockbuster reds. It’s best to use red wines that don’t have huge tannins. When reduced, ample tannins leave a bitter flavor. That would suggest cooking with merlot or pinot noir, rarely only cabernet sauvignon.
For the same reason, be loath to use so-called “cooking wine.” Not only are such wines often oxidized, they are packed with salt. Concentrated, they’ll render a dish saline.
Finally, it isn’t necessary, as the adage had it, to “cook with the same wine that you will serve.” The flavor compounds and nuances of a finely etched wine simply don’t survive the heat of most cooking.
For example, preparing boeuf bourgignon or coq au vin doesn’t require expensive red Burgundy. For these classic French dishes, any of the world’s well-made, balanced, medium- to full-bodied red wines will serve.
Alcohol and cooking with wine
Many people believe that the alcohol in wine evaporates when the wine is heated during cooking. That’s only partially true.
Alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water (I’ve read anywhere from 172-187 degrees versus water’s 212F). So, if a cook deglazes a sauté pan with wine, for example, more alcohol than water evaporates first.
According to the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, 75 percent alcohol remains in a flambéed dessert, for instance; 25 percent, in a dish that has been simmered or braised for one hour; and only 5 percent in the same dish after two and a half hours.
Keep in mind, however, that that is the percentage of the original level of alcohol in the wine added. For example, after a 3-hour braise, only about .06 percent of alcohol would remain from a 13 percent alcohol by-volume red wine. That may be significant to some people, insignificant to others.
If you prefer to cook without wine or beer, or use substitutes for wine or beer in cooking, see Cooking Without Wine or Beer.