Cooking With Wine: 5 Essential Tips

May 20, 2015

Wine, when consumed in moderation, has been linked to several health benefits and can protect you against heart disease, diabetes, skin damage from UV rays, aging, cancer, weakening of bone-tissues and memory loss. Given its splendid taste, it has become a favorite in the culinary world as well.

Wine makes for a great swap for fattening butter and oils, commonly used to flavor food. But cooking with wine takes some amount of practice and experience, lest you should end up with a strong-tasting dish. Refer to our quick tips, before you start using wine in your kitchen:

Know what quality to pick: Before you go ahead and purchase wine to use in a recipe, read the steps. If wine is the hero of the dish (for example, Coq au Vin), then go ahead and buy a lovely wine that’s good enough to drink. But if the recipe only needs you to deglaze the key ingredients with some wine, feel free to use leftover wine.
Go for dry wines instead of the sweet ones: Cooking releases the sugar content in wine, making your food taste sweeter than you might like or expect. It’s best to opt for dry wine, which contains relatively less sugar, thus lending the perfect flavor to your food.
Give it time to cook thoroughly: Wine, like all other alcohol drinks, takes its time to burn off. Hence, add it in the beginning with other ingredients, so that it has enough time to get cooked. Otherwise, you will end up with a dish that is soggy and/or overpowering. Simmering wine along with the food will enrich the flavor of your dish, and keep it moist.
Use white wine in mild foods and red wine in spicy dishes: The tannins in red wine add bitterness, astringency and complexity in a dish that’s basically spicy. On the other hand, the acid in white wine enhances the flavors of mild dishes.
Experiment with aromatic flavors: Some wines have distinct fruity or floral notes. Using them in your cooking will add a wonderful flavor dimension to complex, spicy dishes. Be sure not to add them to sweeter recipes.

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