Once you’ve been introduced to the world of cooking with wine, it’s hard to go back. Wine’s acidity can help ingredients retain moisture while adding savoriness or sweetness to dishes. While most people know how beneficial wine in cooking can be, they don’t always know how to help it reach its full potential. You may be off to a great start if you can avoid these common mistakes:
Choosing a Wine Based On Price
Most highly regarded winemakers like Cakebread Cellars offer a broad variety of wines at different price points to appeal to a wider range of wine drinkers. While this can be convenient if you have a strict entertainment budget, it can also be helpful if you buy wine for cooking.
A common misconception is that you can either spend the very least amount of money on wine or the very most to benefit from a delicious wine-infused dish. However, what you can expect from the addition of wine to a meal can depend on your preferences. As long as you like the variety you choose and it’s of the right red or white variety for your recipes, you may enjoy the final result.
Adding the Wine Too Late
After tasting your food upon it being nearly ready to serve, you might consider adding wine to balance spices, achieve a ‘kick,’ or add acidity. This can sound like a good idea in theory, but adding wine late in the cooking process is rarely a good idea.
Adding wine near the end of the cooking process can often mean that it doesn’t have enough time to simmer, reduce, and impart its flavor to other ingredients. You may also notice that the wine adds an overpowering taste to the food because the alcohol hasn’t had time to cook out.
Adding Too Much Wine
You might really enjoy the wine variety you’re adding to your food, but that doesn’t mean you should add more than the recipe calls for. You truly can have too much of a good thing as far as wine is concerned.
Too much wine can overwhelm a dish, leading to an overpowering taste. While it can be challenging to come back from adding too much wine, there are additions you can make to try to achieve balance once more. Add more sweet ingredients to a sweet dish or add butter or olive oil to a savory dish.
Using a Tannic Wine
Tannic wines can be delicious when paired with rich, fatty meat like prime ribs. However, they are often less suitable in a reduction sauce. Tannic wines are already quite powerful on the palate. When reducing them into a sauce, those flavors can be intensified. Reduction sauces with tannic wines can become bitter and overpowering. Fortunately, most recipes come with wine recommendations to help you choose the most suitable variety.
We can’t always avoid making mistakes when we cook, whether we’re cooking with wine or not. However, learning about these common wine mistakes above might mean you can avoid making them yourself. You might then enjoy a more positive cooking experience.
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