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Cooking With Wine PDF Print E-mail
Written by Tanith Tyrr   
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Sigh. I'm not following this. How can I cheat?

Now, if you're sincerely interested enough in cooking with great wines to have read this far, but you are not enough of a cook to have any clue what I am talking about, cheat. Here's how. Add a glass of good wine to a cup or two of a not very strongly flavored, simple sauce that you have simmering gently on the stove. Turn the heat off.

Your basic sauce can be no more than flour fried slowly in an equal part of butter until lightly browned with a bit of milk and good broth added to thin it to the desired consistency; be sure it is cooked well before adding the wine. A good simple sauce to enhance with a strong young red wine starts with fresh tomatoes simmered down slowly in olive oil until they collapse into a savory paste, at which point you can add herbs and garlic and onions and simmer down some more.

If you feel like experimenting, throw other things into the sauce that the taste of the wine reminds you of. Fruit works surprisingly well. So do peppers and olives and savory vegetables. You can do quite a nice thing with an herby, peppery Sauvignon Blanc by adding it to a basic light cream sauce and throwing in diced bell peppers and freshly ground black pepper. Italian herbs work wonderfully with a full-bodied, tannic red. You can experiment with lemon, lime and orange to bring out citrus notes in a Chardonnay.

Why do people flame Cognac and brandy, anyhow? Should I use the good stuff?

Essentially the same principle applies to flaming off liqueurs and spirits as to reducing wine. You are flaming off a large part of the alcohol content and applying high heat for a brief time to the liquid. It does change the taste structure, but the basic flavor elements of the liqueur remain intact, and you can still taste them. So yes, use something that is at least drinkable. Don't waste the old, subtle and fragile Cognac on a flamed sauce, but do pick up a decently sturdy brandy, an assertive Calvados or a woodsy Armagnac whose strength of character will survive in the sauce.

Poaching with Sauternes — Oooh, that's expensive stuff!

An uncomfy number of wine recipes that call for Sauternes want you to use large amounts of them to poach something in. Ow, that's expensive. I have found that substituting almost any non-oaky, full bodied and lush white wine does perfectly well for those sorts of uses. Semillon would be my first pick, failing that a Chardonnay that was not aged with an entire garden patio's worth of oak chips floating in the barrel. Soleo makes a wonderful semi-sweet white wine that is very inexpensive and which substitites perfectly well for a Sauternes for most cooking uses. A Sauvignon Blanc that isn't too grassy or herby would be a fine choice.

Good places to put wine in your food

  • In any tomato based pasta sauce — try Chianti, Cabernet Sauvignon, Barolo
  • In soups — try a crisp dry white wine like a Sancerre in a seafood soup or boulliabase, or an earthy red if you are using rich root vegetables and beef stock.
  • In marinades for meats and wild game — Pinot Noir, Bordeaux, Burgundy
  • Creamed in with a strong cheese — Sauternes, pecans and Roquefort makes an excellent spread between light, crisp sheets of puff pastry.
  • To deglaze the pan and get up all those crisply caramelized meat bits after roasting a round of beef or a brace of tender ducklings. Use a rich, full Pinot Noir for the duck, or a hearty Burgundy for the beef.
  • For delicious sauces, like this Vanilla-Merlot sauce. Simmer down vanilla beans in a luscious, soft and juicy Merlot, and scrape the pods well. Add chopped shallots and fresh Comice or D'Anjou pears, peeled and crushed. Serve with filet mignon, or well flavored game meats such as venison, elk, buffalo or ostrich.

To summarize

Cooking with wine can be a pleasure and an enhancement to good food. Don't cook with what you wouldn't drink, and don't use nasty ingredients. You absolutely cannot make a dish any better than the worst of its components. If you splurge on some items and skimp on others, the dish will taste more of skimp than splurge, as one off note can put everything else into disharmony. Buy those fresh tomatoes and take the time to cook them down. Use real butter or a fine grade of olive oil. Grind your pepper fresh and pay a few cents extra for good kosher salt. The results on your table will reward you.


 "As viscous as motor oil swirled in a swamp, redolent of burnt bell peppers nested in by incontinent mice and a finish reminiscent of the dregs of a stale can of Coca-Cola that someone has been using as an ashtray. Not a bad drink, though."

- Excerpt from The Moose Turd Wine Tasting by T. A. Nonymous


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