If you want to create truly superb cuisine, it is essential to learn to cook with wine. Using wine adds flavors that are unobtainable by any other method. For instance, Boeuf Bourguignon (Beef Burgundy) without the burgundy is just simple Beef Tips and Noodles. While not bad, it’s certainly not in the same league. Similarly, any dish with a wine sauce would be impossible without understanding the culinary value of wines.
In the kitchen, wine serves three purposes: it can be used as a marinade to enhance flavor and tenderize, it can be used as a cooking liquid for poaching, steaming, sautéing, etc., and it can be used as a flavoring in a finished dish. The goal is to enhance, fortify, and intensify the flavor and aroma of your culinary creation, not mask it. As with any ingredient, be judicious in the amount used—too little won’t be noticed, and too much will be overpowering. We want to strike a happy balance.
The alcohol will evaporate, as will most of the sulfites, leaving the essence of the wine in the food. The flavor of the wine can also be concentrated by reducing (boiling down).
All wine contains sulfites, a natural by-product of the fermentation process. Some winemakers add sulfur dioxide to freshly mashed grapes to preserve the color and freshness, but they evaporate harmlessly during cooking.
Cooking with wine is not as complicated as it sounds. There are a few basic guidelines to follow, and the rest is mostly experience and personal preference. The results far outweigh the minimal effort it takes to learn to do it properly.
Wine Selection and Pairing Guidelines
Selecting wine for cooking is not much different from selecting a wine to drink. The same guidelines apply. If you like drinking it, you’ll probably like it in a suitable dish. There’s no need to buy a $100 bottle of wine to cook with—if it tastes reasonably good, it will work. I recommend sticking with mainstream table wines. Most are reasonably good, and you won’t have to take out a second mortgage on your house to stock the kitchen.
I have a confession to make: I have a thing for boxed wines. I know, they are considered tacky and lumped in with polyester suits (I like those, too!), but for cooking, they are remarkably consistent and very good-tasting table wines. Since the bag is airtight, the last glass tastes just like the first for a very long time. I’ve kept a box for over two weeks with no noticeable deterioration in quality. For cooking, they are fantastic. You might want to keep a box or two hidden in the kitchen—our little secret…
Here are some suggestions for good pairings:
• **Regional Cuisine** – Try matching regional wines • **Dry, Fortified Wines** (sherry, port) – Consommé, poultry, vegetable soups • **Sweet White Wines** – Desserts • **Crisp Dry White Wines** – Seafood soups, bouillabaisse • **Dry White Wines** – Light cream sauces, seafood, poultry, pork, veal • **Earthy Full-bodied Reds** – Soups with root vegetables, beef stock • **Young Full-bodied Robust Reds** – Red sauces • **Young Reds** – Red meat dishes
These are by no means absolute, but they offer a great starting point.
Some guidelines to follow will keep you from making catastrophic mistakes:
• Do not cook with wine you won’t drink. Select wines that you would enjoy drinking with the particular cuisine you are preparing.
• Never use “Cooking Wine” or “Cooking Sherry”. These vile, salty concoctions will ruin your food. If it tastes bad in the bottle, it will taste bad in your dish.
• Always taste a bit of the wine before you add it to your food. A small sip can tell you if it will complement your dish. If it doesn’t seem right, cap it, use it later for something else, and try another bottle.
• Do not add wine to a dish right before serving. It will be harsh and ruin the flavor. Wine needs to simmer with the food so that they can develop a relationship together. The alcohol and sulfites need time to evaporate.
• Wine does not belong in every dish. More than one wine-based dish in a single meal will overwhelm your taste buds, and everything will taste monotonous.
• When making a wine reduction, do it slowly, over low heat. Reducing it too quickly will cause you to lose much of its character. One cup of raw wine typically reduces to about 2-1/2 tablespoons.
The most common use of wine is to deglaze a sauté pan in preparation for making a sauce or a reduction. Simply remove what you were cooking from the pan, pour in a bit of wine, and stir it slowly over medium heat, allowing it to absorb the flavors of what was previously cooked in it. The amount of time spent reducing the wine is mainly dependent on the type of wine. White wines require a small amount of reduction, while red wines require more time, reducing until there is almost no liquid left. If you don’t reduce red wine down to this point, it will make your food purple—definitely not the most appealing color for cooked food. Reducing it fully will give it a deep red hue, which looks great alongside the browns in most stock sauces.
You can also use wine to reduce the fat content in your finished dishes. Remember, wine contains no fat at all. Here are a few examples: • Instead of sautéing vegetables in heaps of fat, oil, or butter, reduce the oil by at least ½ and add wine.
• Instead of making a marinade with ½ cup of oil, reduce the oil to ¼ cup and add ¼ cup of wine.
• Instead of adding ¾ cup of oil to a cake recipe, add ¾ cup of white or dessert wine to the batter. This will make your cake lighter and add subtle flavors.
The ways to use wine in the kitchen are only limited by your imagination. It doesn’t take long to learn how to cook with wine.
By Chef Joel
