Cooking with Wine

[THEU]

I am not setting myself up as an expert by any stretch. I also want to say how much I appreciate this thread. I know that we all have our culinary opinions, and yes I know that I am very opinionated when it comes to the food world. I just love that we come here and discuss cooking.

So enough of the lovefest above. The point of this thread is to discuss cooking with wine. I have seen several mention that dishes that call for wine. These are mainly meat dishes. I have seen that many mention they are using $5 wines, or something pretty cheap. My understanding is that as wine cooks it intensifies the flavour, so you want to use a wine that you would drink. Now some of you may have a $5 wine that you like to drink, but these tend not to be the best wines. I cook with Yellow Tail wines quite a bit which aren't expensive, but they are also the wines I probably drink the most because of their value. I just wanted to discuss how people on here understand what wines are best to cook with.

 

[DeadHeadHorn]

I think the quality of wine is overstated in cooking. I wouldn't suggest using Carlo Rossi, but I think a $5 bottle certainly suffices. I've heard that the line "don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink" refers more to the fact that some "cooking wines" have salt added, and that you don't want to use those.

It also depends on what you're using the wine for. If you're adding a little white wine to a bisque or something, the quality doesn't matter as much. If you're making a red wine reduction, the wine's flavor will obviously be a lot more important.

Personally, I think you can find a lot of good wines for around $5, and so those are what I generally cook with. When all the flavors combine, you taste the wine less, and so it's not really that big of a deal, IMO.

 

[El Sapo]

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