What Wines Are Good to Cook With? By Derek Rogers At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Wines can add a richness to meats and sauces that can be hard to duplicate any other way. When cooking with wine, the alcohol is essentially evaporated from the wine and what remains is a concentrated base that is full of flavour and enhances any meat or sauce that contains it.

What wines are good to cook with can be initially answered by the response given by many fine Chefs, which say the rule of thumb is “if you wouldn’t drink it, then don’t cook with it”. But certainly, depending on the dish, there are certain wines that would be better than others.

The added flavour of cooking with wine is why you want one that has a good taste, not a bitter, cheap wine. It doesn’t mean that it has to be expensive either, but keep in mind that good and bad wines have water and alcohol in common, which cook out of the dish. What you are left with is the flavouring your dish will take on.

Typically, red wines go best with beef, where white wines go better with seafood or poultry, as a general rule. What wines are good to cook with are typically dry wines, since they have a subtle flavour and aren’t too sweet. Red wines should be young, dry and full-bodied, where white wines should be dry and full-bodied, but some of them can taste sour, so you may want to taste and experiment a little.

Fortified wines like sherry and port wine are considered sweet wines and vermouth has herbs and spices added so you want to be careful not to add too much of these wines to a dish, or they can become overpowering.

Food marinated in wine gives subtle flavour and others can be used as a liquid to sauté in or added as flavouring at the end of the cooking process. Sometimes, wine does not compliment a dish, so it should not be added to everything. Wine can also be used as a component in a salad dressing for greens, to be substituted for vinegar, just add some oil. Sweet wines can be added to honey and brown sugar as a dressing for a fruit salad.

A nice red wine, as a cooking liquid for a large cut of meat, like a roast, can give the dish a totally different flavour. When you sauté mushrooms, onions and a pat of butter in wine as a topping for a steak, it creates a delightful sauce. Cooking fish in vermouth and then thickening the juices with cream and adding spices can give a gourmet taste to an otherwise bland dish.

What wines are good to cook with can be answered by simply a good tasting wine that is flavourful tasting when you drink it. Red wines are best paired with red meats and dark sauces while white wines are best paired with lighter coloured sauces and meats like poultry and seafood, but personal taste can dictate whether you want to add wine, and what kind. Cooking with wine is a great way to add richness to a meal.

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