Cooking with wine can add another dimension to your meal. Recipes will be enhanced by the subtle flavours, and since most of the alcohol evaporates when wine is simmered or reduced by heat, you are left with all the flavour. Here are some pointers for the use of wine in the kitchen:
- Use wines in cooking that have a fresh taste. If you wouldn’t drink it, don’t use it. Many grocery store cooking wines have salt added to them and taste rather unpleasant.
- Add the wine halfway through the cooking time so that the flavours are not boiled away.
- Don’t add wine to a finished sauce or you might introduce a raw, un-integrated flavour into the dish.
- Use a comparable wine, or the same wine, in cooking that you plan to serve with the dish.
- Suggested white wines may include Riesling, Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc.
- Suggested red wines may include Gamay Noir, Merlot and Shiraz.
- Similar to matching wine and food, always match the weight of the wine to the weight of the dish. An example would be a fish poached with a delicate Riesling or a rich Shiraz added to a winter stew.