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Cooking With Wine! What it does & Why Chefs use them...

Updated: Nov 28, 2020



When it comes to cooking with wine, recipes don’t always specify which wine to use or why. In fact, most of the time they don’t even tell you what the wine does when you add it to the food. For these reasons cooks everywhere want to know, what’s the point of cooking with wine and does it really make a difference?


In short, there are many reasons and yes, it does make a difference, and here’s why. For starters, it helps to know that when cooking with wine, you’re actually cooking with the flavor concentration of the grape itself, along with the the acidity that it leaves behind as it cooks into your food. So how does this help your recipe?


Again, the short answer is that the acidity of the wine helps to heighten the flavors and natural sugars that are found in the proteins and fibers of the other foods. You see, as these sugars and proteins cook over the heat intensities, they become concentrated and often stick to the bottom of the pan and if left alone they can burn and discolor the food giving an off putting finish to the final flavor of the dish. So what does that mean for the food?


It means that as those sugars and proteins tighten to the bottom of the pan, a splash of wine will help release them from the pan so that they are reconstituted into the flavor of the food itself. Chefs call this process, deglazing.


But is it really absolutely necessary to use wine? Once more, the short answer is, no... its not absolutely necessary to use wine. The explanation though is quite different. Again, its necessary to consider that wines has a level of acidity that has a specific impact on the food flavor itself. However, for the process of deglazing, you could use a different acidic liquid, for example, a whiskey, or vodka, or even fruit juice.


Additionally you can use “acidic foods” such as lemons, capers, or tomatoes. It’s worth noting though that using acidic foods that have a higher sugar content can also add to the side affect of additional caramelization, resulting in said foods sticking to the pan. The reason being that these “acidic foods”, having not been fermented or distilled, like the wines or other liquors have, therefore they do not have the actuation of the alcohol within them. This means that your window for deglazing becomes much smaller to work with, because without the impact of the alcohol, most foods will continue to stick. So using the acidity of something like wine that has a higher alcohol content, actually works more consistently and can even add additional flavor to your food, as long as you don’t use too much. It also helps not to use a wine where the alcohol content is so high, that it immediately evaporate as soon as it hits the pan, thereby, doing little to encourage the deglazing process.

When learning to deglaze, start by using wines that have a lower alcohol content and that are more neutral in flavor. As you become more familiar with the behavior of the process, you can switch to using something a bit more personalized to your cooking preferences...

That said, how do you know when you’ve used too much, and what affect will this have on the food? Well for starters, adding too much acid can cause the fibers in your food to break down far too much as it cooks which can lead to your food to having bad textures or becoming too mushy. Over doing it with the acid when deglazing can cause your food to take on more of the flavor of your acid, instead of highlighting the flavor of the food itself. So the way to avoid over enthusiasm on the deglaze is to use, just enough of the acidic liquid, to release the proteins and sugars that are concentrating on the bottom of the pan, which in turn, will help keep things from sticking and burning as the food continues to cook.



However, mistakes do happen, and when they do, a work around for having a little too much acid in your deglaze, is to add a little, water or broth to whatever you’re cooking which will dilute the acid in a way that allows it to still do its trick, while not overpowering the finish of the food.

Yes, wines can be a great cooking partner and can do much to bring out wonderful flavors in a variety of foods. So now that you have a better of idea of “Why” to use wines when cooking and “How” they help with deglazing, we’ll post a follow up piece to focus on two other important points of wine use when cooking. Namely, knowing “When” to use them during the cooking process, and “Which” types to use to enhance the flavors of your food.


In the meantime, why not give a little practice to what you’ve learned so far. And stay tuned for follow up explanations on the use of “Vino” and get deeper clarity on how to use it to make great food.


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© 2020 by The Culinary Savant

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