Cooking With Wine Is Easy – Easy & Fast Cooking with Wines
January 27th, 2008
There used to be a time when cooking with wines was left either for cordon bleu chefs or our Italian and French cousins. However, the scene is no longer the same with the average American using different types of wines to flavor food in his or her kitchen. Cooking with wine imparts foods a very distinct taste and flavor that cannot be achieved otherwise. If you use wine properly with your food, your cooking skills are bound to get noticed and complimented by your friends and family. However, cooking with wine, though not tough, is certainly a little tricky to say the least. But with our tips for easy and fast cooking with wines, you will become an expert very soon.
· One misconception that we should get rid of at the earliest is that your food tastes better with cooking wines. No, it does not. This is because your food tastes better with wines, not ‘cooking wines’. Cooking wines generally have a high sodium content and do not taste as good as the real thing. On the other hand, if you do not like the flavor it gives your food, you cannot even use it for drinking. Use only drinking wines for flavoring your food also. A little quantity of a good drinking wine, when added to food can impart great taste and aroma.
· The easiest and safest way of adding wine to your food is by putting it in a marinade. This would impart your meats a distinct flavor without your having to slave over it. The trick to remember here is to use just a little wine, instead of a lot and your dish will come up tops.
· When using wines in your non-vegetarian dishes, in marinades or for gravies, remember the wine and meat pairing rules. Use red wines for flavoring red meat and white wines for flavoring white meat, poultry and fish. As far as the quantity of wine to add is concerned, start with adding only a little and go along to please your taste buds. You can also use white wines to add acidity to white sauces and gravies.
· If you have never cooked with wine before, then you should start with using it in marinades and gravies. Many people start cooking with wine by adding it in place of water and you can also do the same. All you need to do in this case is add wine equal to the quantity of water. Try to use this procedure in dishes that do not require too much water though. This is not because the wine will intoxicate people who eat your dish (it will not, since most alcohol content evaporates with cooking and wine hardly has a lot to start with), but because you might not want to part too much with a good and expensive drinking wine.
· At the cost of repetition, we once again stress that you use only good quality drinking wines for cooking. Do not use sherry and sweet wines, unless specified in