Best Wine Substitutes for Degassing Pan (and More)
Like Julia Child before me, I love cooking with wine and find it works as well as a companion and ingredient. But from time to time I find that the wine cabinet is empty. It’s unfortunate, but your pantry already has a couple of great substitutes perfect for removing frosting.
Wine is an excellent cooking medium. You can use it to remove the frosting from the pan by removing the small, aromatic caramelized pieces that have stuck to the surface. Or, you can pour it into a pasta sauce for extra appeal. Regardless of how I use it, I am grateful for the fermented grapes and the depth of flavor they add. Nothing replaces the real thing in recipes that require a lot (like half a bottle) of wine – you just can’t make Coq au Vin without wine – but these are great options for whipping up a pasta sauce or removing frosting. Pan.
Red, red wine (substitutes):
I have seen fruit juice, red wine vinegar, and broth recommended as good non-alcoholic frosting removal options, but they never seemed quite right to me. Of course, they do their job, peeling off all the little things and the like, but they need a little work on the flavors. The spicy fruit juice is too sweet, the pure red wine vinegar is too sour, and while the broth adds flavor, it is … well, the taste of the broth. I needed a deglaser with a good balance of sweetness, acidity and fruit, so I mixed and matched until I found the perfect combinations. (I had to eat a lot of steaks, but I am very selfless in this regard.)
Option one: a mixture of fruit juice and red wine vinegar
Kitchn recommends a mixture of fruit juice and vinegar to mimic the taste and acidity of the wine, so I started experimenting here. For the juice, I chose a 100% pomegranate and cranberry blend sweetened with apple juice as the concord grapes were too sweet when reduced. I burned a piece of ribeye (the first of many), getting a good crust on all sides, and then set it aside while I removed the frosting as usual.
Kitchn recommends one tablespoon of vinegar per cup of fruit juice, but I was not very satisfied with that. In terms of taste, the acid was weak and too sweet. Wanting to raise the acid, I tried a 50/50 mixture of juice and vinegar . An equal mix of sweet and tart liquids results in a flavor that is a surprise! – a greater balance of sweet and tart flavors, and here we begin to approach the depth of taste that you get from wine, albeit a sweeter red color. If you have a habit of cooking with sweeter wines like sweet sherry or marsala (or if you’re making dessert) you can stop here and be very happy, but I wanted a flavor that mimics a drier red.
In the end, I settled on a cup of red wine vinegar with two tablespoons of juice. This ratio is a personal favorite of mine, and if you’re a fan of cooking or degassing with drier reds, I think it will be yours too. It is quite sour, but a couple of tablespoons of the sweet juice will prevent over-consuming it. The fruit is there , but it hangs in the background rather than dominates.
Option two: kombucha
There is definitely more alcohol in my kitchen than kombucha, but perhaps you are much more health conscious than I am, which is why you have a few of these probiotic fermented drinks in your fridge. If so, you’re in luck, because kombucha can be substituted for ounce of wine per ounce with pretty great results. If you think about it: it makes sense. The teas are fermented, it is rather sour, and there is usually some kind of fruity action there. (There are also traces of alcohol, which probably doesn’t affect the flavor much, but it’s good to know what it is if you’re trying to abstain entirely.) The result is a skillet sauce similar to a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and juice, but with a little more acid and a little unusual fermented qualities, which makes the sauce for the skillet more interesting. The result will of course depend on the type of kombucha you are using (I used Synergy “Cosmic Cranberry”), but I think it would be fun to play around with the different flavors. I bet home brewing would make a really interesting sauce with fun flavors.
White (wine) lies:
I don’t drink a lot of white wine and I almost never have it on hand, so this part of the experiment was very applicable to my life. Lemon juice, white grape juice, and white wine vinegar are recommended, but again, I found grape juice and vinegar to be a small note when used on their own, and removing the frosting and reducing pure lemon juice proved to be incredibly pungent. Deciding to find a more sophisticated frosting remover, I sautéed a few pieces of chicken breast in oil and tried several mixtures.
Option one: a mixture of white grape juice and white wine vinegar
A cup of white wine vinegar mixed with one tablespoon of white grape juice was the winner here. In fact, it was hard for me to say that apart from the skillet sauce I made with real white wine. It was bright, sour and slightly fruity. In short: it is ideal and can be used with anything that goes well with white wine.
I also tried a 50/50 juice and vinegar mixture , and like the 50/50 mixture above, it was pretty close to the sweet and tart balance you get with sweet white wine. If you like sweet poultry sauce (like those little toothpick samples they give out at the mall), then this is a pretty good option. I would not recommend it for more tender seafood; it would completely crush the scallop.
Option two: a mixture of white grape juice and lemon
Pure lemon doesn’t work, but a 50/50 mix of fresh lemon and white grape juice is just a god. Lemon is still the main flavor here, but white grapes add some sugar and fruit to help calm it down. Use it for anything where you want the lemon to be in the foreground, such as chicken piccata or shrimp.
Therefore, the next time you find yourself in a kitchen where there is not enough wine, do not panic and use one of the options described above. Better yet, you can just go right for one and save the wine to drink. I like wine in food and all that, but I like it even more in my mouth.