Walk into a high-end restaurant and often either the menu or the waiter can tell you what dishes and wines pair well together. A Cabernet Sauvignon for the ribeye steak. Pinot Noir for the duck. Chardonnay for a creamy chicken dish.
Pairing both what you’re drinking with the food you’re enjoying helps to create a full, balanced and delightful taste in your mouth throughout your meal.
But what if you opened that bottle of wine while food was being cooked and prepared? In fact, cooking with wine can add an exciting and tasty upgrade to your recipes. And when also combined with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oils, your taste buds are in for a real treat.
Why Cook with Wine?
Bringing wine into the recipe, instead of just enjoying alongside a dish, can do wonders for the flavor of the dish. Like how balsamic vinegar transforms and elevates the flavor of a dish, wine also serves as an acidic ingredient that serves multiple purposes. When added to a marinade, wine helps to tenderize and keep your meats moist as it cooks.
Wine, in a way, is like salt in that it helps to amplify and highlight the other flavors in a dish.
Cooking with wine is a popular component in french cooking, as you’ll find a splash of wine in many recipes.
Six Tips & Tricks for Cooking with Wine
So how do you incorporate this flavor-packed drink into your cooking? Here, we share six top tips to help you make the most of cooking with wine.
1. Pay Attention to the Flavor
Each wine has their own unique flavor. Especially between white wines and red wines, the flavor differences are significant. Wines also have differing levels of sweetness.
For example, if you’ve got a bright chicken dish, a white wine that has a citrus flavor like Sauvignon Blanc can pair nicely.
Also pay attention to the acidity of the dish you're making and the acidity of the wine you want to include, as wines have differing levels of acidity.
2. Pair with EVOO & Balsamic Vinegar
Whether flavor-infused or not, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegars can make great friends with wine when cooking. Since balsamic vinegar and wine have similar acidic components, they can either be used together or just include one or the other. Extra virgin olive oil plays nice with both ingredients to bring depth, balance and flavor. Use all three ingredients for a truly transformative flavor.
Fustini’s Oils & Vinegars also offers wine vinegars to bring the best of both worlds. These include:
3. Incorporate it in Marinades
One of the easiest and flavor-packed ways to cook with wine is to include it in your marinades for poultry, meat and seafood. Lighter meats like chicken and turkey may go well with lighter wines. Darker meats like steak may go along better with a red or more full-bodied wine.
4. It May Still Contain Alcohol
When cooking with wine, you may wonder, is there still alcohol in it after cooking? The answer to that depends on factors like the temperature you cook at and how long you cook your dish for. Dishes such as sauces must be brought to a boil in order to help cook off some of its alcohol. It’s best to cook a sauce with wine uncovered until the sauce reduces by half. While there may still be traces of alcohol, the harsh alcohol taste evaporates.
5. Pair the Preparation
When choosing what wine to include in a dish, it’s also important to know how the dish will be prepared and what the end result will be. For example, a heavy sauce rich in spices may do better with a red or full-bodied wine. A creamy or light sauce may do better with a light wine that’s not very sweet.
Remember there are many ways you can prepare a dish when cooking with wine. From steaming to roasting to even baking, the opportunities are endless.
6. Amp Up the Sauces
Perhaps one of the best ways to incorporate wine into your cooking is through the sauce. By deglazing a pan and creating a sauce from a wine, you can elevate the flavors to create a harmonious bite. Remember to cook down the sauce by half to reduce the amount of alcohol in the sauce.
Get Started Cooking with Wine
Ready to uncork a bottle and get cooking? Fustini’s Oils & Vinegars has numerous recipes you can try that include wine in the ingredient list. Check out these ideas below and see our recipe page for even more ideas.
Apple Stuffed Pork Tenderloin - a sweet combination of rice, bacon, apple and butternut squash using white wine, Sage & Wild Mushroom olive oil and Thyme balsamic.
Bruschetta Shrimp Pasta - a creamy and bright pasta dish made with white wine, Basil Crush olive oil and Tuscan spice blend.
Garlic Herb Roasted Chicken - Roast up a chicken in no time with this flavorful recipe that includes a dry white wine, and Garlic olive oil.