Enhancing your cooking skills means familiarising yourself with different techniques and fundamentals. Wine has long been considered a key ingredient in countless dishes worldwide, helping to deglaze pans and break down fats and other flavour components. Furthermore, wine can enhance the flavour of a dish with a rich acidity or fruitiness. If you want to elevate the quality of your cooking, consider the following advice for cooking with wine.
Don’t Cook With Wine You Wouldn’t Be Happy To Drink
As a rule of thumb, experts advise against cooking with a wine you wouldn’t be happy to drink. While many of us reserve an unwanted bottle of gifted wine for “cooking wine”, chances are you won’t enjoy the favour it could add to a dish. That said, you can purchase specific cooking wine to add acidity and to break down tougher cuts of meat when used in marinades. However, for sauces, braising and deglazing, a good quality dry wine will add an excellent layer of flavour. Try to avoid oaky wines like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, as they can become bitter when cooked.
Learn About Wine Pairings
When it comes to selecting the ideal variety of wine for a recipe, it is always worth considering how well a specific wine will pair with the finished product. For example, take the classic warming French comfort dish, beef bourguignon. French cuisine experts advise both cooking and serving your stew with a weighty Pinot Noir or a robust Beaujolais. Lighter seafood dishes like moules mariniere work best with a light-bodied, aromatic Riesling or Chablis.
Marinating
One of the primary uses for wine in cooking is as an ingredient in a marinade. Not only does alcohol in wine tenderise the meat by breaking down its proteins, a process known as “denaturing”, but it also adds a complex depth of flavour.
Red wine and steak are a classic combination. As such, you can elevate the flavour and improve the texture of a sirloin tip side steak by marinating it in a balanced mixture of red wine, olive oil, garlic, herbs and seasonings.
Deglazing
Deglazing is another common cooking technique that uses wine to dissolve the caramelised food particles left on the bottom of a pan (known as fond) after sautéeing or roasting meat and vegetables. Deglazing is an excellent way to release every bit of flavour into a dish and is often the starting point for creating a sauce or preparing a braise. While you can use water or broth to deglaze, wine or dry sherry adds sweetness and acidity.
Red Wine Jus
Au jus is a French culinary term meaning "with juice". Essentially a thin gravy made from meat juices derived from a roast, a jus is the perfect way to enhance the flavour of prime rib roast or roast chicken. Rich, full-bodied burgundy wine varieties work exceptionally well as part of a sumptuous jus, along with aromatic herbs like rosemary and bay. You could even use port to make a deliciously sweet jus perfect for filet mignon or garlic mushrooms.
Flambéing
Learning to flambé can seem like a daunting prospect; however, once you get the hang of it, flambéing can give a dish a wonderfully smokey yet savoury quality. Flambéing is traditionally done using a high-alcohol spirit like brandy, cognac or rum; wine, on the other hand, is too low in alcohol, so it will not ignite. However, you can flambé traditional wine-based dishes such as coq au vin by adding a few tablespoons of cognac.
Braising
Although any liquid can be used for braising, wine adds an excellent depth of flavour. For the best results, choose a full-bodied red wine like Nebbiolo, and mix it with stock to slow-cook meats like lamb shoulder and shanks, as well as chicken thighs and legs. Braising tenderises fattier cuts of meat by dissolving collagen and connective tissue into gelatin, making for tender, flavour-packed meat that falls off the bone.
Dessert Wine
Dessert wine is an excellent addition to sweet treats like trifle and poached pears. Fortified wines like sherry, port and madeira are commonly used as ingredients in both sweet and savoury dishes, adding a sweet, nutty flavour to sauces, soups and stews. While the alcohol content of fortified wine is relatively high, the majority of alcohol is burnt off in the cooking process through evaporation.