There is an old kitchen legend that cooking wine was born in the Middle Ages to keep thirsty cooks from tippling on the job. While the history is fascinating, the modern reality is a bit more bitter—literally. If you’ve ever wondered why your homemade reduction tastes more like a copper penny than a French bistro, the culprit is likely hiding in that salted, shelf-stable bottle. Cooking wine is, in fact, a culinary misnomer. In this article, I explain what it is and what you should be using instead.
In case it isn’t clear, it is bad to use cooking wine in recipes. It is atrocious in fact. You may pay two to five dollars for a 16-oz bottle of cooking wine at the grocery store. It will taste like a nickel, if not a copper penny. So-called cooking wine is salty, bitter, and sour, and none of these tastes come together harmoniously. The saltiness alone should put you off. If you do not like the taste of something, you should not cook with it, and this includes wine. As wine experts say, “you shouldn’t cook with a wine you would not drink.” Before you pay 5 bucks for cooking wine, consider paying ten dollars for any other wine meant to be drunk.
What is Cooking Wine?
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as cooking wine, despite what the companies say. There is bad wine, and there is good wine. But, there is no special type of wine that is meant for cooking. It is claimed that cooking wine companies produce wine that is “not intended to be consumed as a beverage but only meant to add flavor to dishes.” If a wine is not intended to be drunk, then why in the world should it be added to foods?
What makes these wines ‘not meant as beverages’ is that they are unaged, generic wines with added salt, preservatives, and sometimes a sweetener. All these added ingredients make it legal for “cooking wine” to be sold as a foodstuff in grocery stores, even though most products contain more alcohol (16-17%) than a typical wine. This is especially true of cooking sherry since sherry is a fortified wine. At least one company sells the stuff in giant vats to be used in industrial food production.
The problem is that not everybody drinks wine, yet some non-wine-drinking folks may need wine to cook with occasionally. These folks are attracted to the convenience of a cheap bottle of cooking wine from their local store. And, since the wine will keep well for months, if not years, they can buy one bottle and use it occasionally for an unspecified period of time. This problem is easily solved.
Sherry Is a Great Cooking Wine
First, if a recipe calls for sherry, even a non-wine drinker can buy a good, drinkable bottle of sherry and use it for months. Sherry is a fortified wine. This means that a distilled spirit, such as brandy, has been added, greatly increasing the alcohol content. While it won’t last as long as cooking wines, an opened bottle of sherry can keep for months in the fridge.
And, sherry can be used in a great many preparations. You can add a splash of sherry to improve the flavor of many dishes, especially those involving a savory sauce of any kind. It goes especially well with cream-based sauces. It is also great for deglazing pans after the meat is cooked, as part of a braising liquid, and to heighten the flavor of soups and stews. And, you can enjoy drinking it and get a nice buzz while making dinner.
Otherwise, if you are not a wine drinker, but must buy a bottle of wine for a certain recipe and want to be able to use it in other dishes, go with a dry wine. Follow your recipe’s recommendation for whether you should choose red or white. Below are the general types of wine that are best for cooking.
Red Wine Should Never be Chilled?
Dry Red Wines For Cooking
- Merlot
- Pinot Noir
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Zinfandel
Dry White Wines For Cooking
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Chardonnay
- Pinot Grigio
- Dry Riesling
Of course, the problem remains. You won’t be using much of the wine from the bottle, so what do you do with the leftover wine? Well, you could drink it. It won’t kill you. But, rather than buying “cooking wine” it’s better to buy a small one-serving bottle of wine for cooking, the kind you’ve seen in hotel mini-bars or airplanes. These tiny bottles are called split or piccolo bottles. They hold 187.5 ml of wine, enough for one glass, or just shy of one cup. If that is not enough, you can sometimes find other small wine bottles, such as a quarter (.375 L/~1.6 cups) or a demi (0.5 L/~2 cups).
Another good solution is to pour the remaining wine into ice cube trays, freeze it, and put the frozen wine cubes into a plastic storage bag for later use. Or, again, just drink the stuff.
