Cooking With Wine

Cooking with Wine

by Fotios Stamos

Make room in your food pantry or your spice rack for a variety of white, red, and sweet wine. This ingredient is becoming more commonly used in recipes today. Another past time approach in cooking that has resurfaced in almost every kitchen across the globe. To some, it seems as a nice touch and to other’s it’s a necessity in enhancing flavors of a dish. Today, wine can be used right in the recipe while cooking or it can be reduced into a sauce for topping off a dish.

The reasoning behind using wine is that it’s a liquid composition of flavors. The key to bringing out the flavors in wine is to actually heat it in a pan to evaporate the alcohol leaving just the flavor characteristics in the liquid. When you use wine right in the recipe while its cooking, the flavors of the wine blend in with the other ingredients creating an array of aromas and results. At the same token, wine will also react as a tenderizer as your cooking certain meats in a pan, while it’s flavoring it. The acidity of the wine will break down fat and moisten the meat as it cooks. Red wines made from the Xynomavro, Mandilaria, Kotsifali, and Agiorgitiko would be preferred in cooking with red sauces and red meats, but can also be used for spicey past dishes. White wines, such as Assyrtiko, Roditis, and Moschofilero would be ideal for cooking with shellfish, poultry, and white sauce pasta dishes. Don’t hesitate to use a wine that is good in quality for your cooking instead of very cheap and inexpensive selections. The cheaper the wine is, the less flavor you’ll most likely get out of it. Depending on the purpose of your dish and how much flavor enhancement you’d like to achieve, use a graduating scale. The less flavor enhancement you’d like, the less expensive your wine should be and purchase and move on from there. A good price range for your ‘cooking’ wine should be $10 a bottle (15 euros).

Another interesting use for wine in cooking is to prepare a reduction sauce out of it to top off your dishes for a delightful finish. At this point, we will use either a red or sweet wine for the sauce. The sugar levels in both are relatively much higher and create a thicker sauce in the pan. The method here would be to pour your red or sweet wine in a heated sauce-pan and while the wine is cooking add a some corn starch to thicken it. Once you see that it has become a thick liquid it is now ready to pour over your sizzling filet or sirloin. I highly recommend using Mandilaria, which is a dry red wine from Crete that has very rich flavor components or for your sweeter selections, Mavrodaphne and Muscat from Samos.

Once you begin experimenting with wine in your recipes, you’ll be intrigued by the results. There are many publications out there that specifically focus on wine as your cooking ingredient, such as ‘Oinomageriki’ by Niki Mitarea and also the ‘Olive & The Caper” by Susanna Hoffman. Stin Ygeas Sas kai Kali Oreksi.