Stop Spoiling Your Food by Cooking With Any Wine You Have
Wine itself is damn delicious, but you can also use it to flavor many dishes, from drunken pasta to sauces and stews. You might think you can take any wine and throw it in a dish, but you should think a little bit before grabbing any bottle you have.
First, don’t switch between red and white if the recipe calls for one or the other. Red is more tannic than white, which means it turns bitter faster as it diminishes, so you really get a huge difference in flavor if you swap red and white wine. Reduce the amount of red wine by 50% or less to avoid bitterness. In addition, Bon Appetit offers a few more things to look out for when preparing food with wine:
- The price doesn’t matter . Since you change the taste a bit when making wine, it doesn’t matter if you use a $ 5 or $ 50 bottle, so you should probably set aside expensive items to drink.
- Choose the wine you like to drink . You won’t be using the entire bottle for cooking, so pick one that you like and pour yourself a glass or two! Unless you have a strong preference, merlot is fine for almost any recipe that calls for red wine, while sauvignon blanc is a good choice for whites.
- Avoid making wine . It can often have salt or preservatives in it that can affect your meal, plus since you’re cooking alcohol-free anyway, you really don’t need to make wine (from which alcohol is usually removed).
You can use wine that has already been opened, but it should not be too old, as this can change the taste, which will change the taste of your dish.