Wine and Liquor

I finally came into some money, and I wanted to start cooking with wines and liquor(mostly whiskey). I haven't really used them before and I have a few questions.

What makes a wine good for cooking? What should I look for? What dishes are suitable for different types of wine? Are there any particular brands that should be sought out or avoided? I have heard that one should only cook with wines you would be willing to drink by itself. Is this true?

Same questions go for liquor.


I am also interested in exploring fruit/berry wine. Are blueberry and strawberry wines any good? Are they comparable to grape wine? What brands should I seek out if I want to try them?

Tastes vary. I suggest picking a category (red wine, white wine, blueberry wine, etc) and just buying a bottle and see if you like it. You could always see if somewhere near you has a class or a tasting event where you can try several types without wasting money on a whole bottle.

Any wine that's good for drinking will be good in food. Don't use the most expensive wines because it's a waste.

If you want to start cooking with wine I'd say the best dish is coq au vin. Get a Burgundy wine you like, put half of it in with the chicken and drink the other half with your dinner. That is my favorite dish to eat on cold Fall/WInter night.

Idk any dishes that use whiskey, only brandy.

>What makes a wine good for cooking?
1) It needs to fit your budget
2) It shouldn't have any off flavors or excessively strong ones. When you cook with wine you often reduce it. That concentrates the flavor. So any nasty taste will get concentrated, and that sucks.

Best advice I've heard is to always choose a wine that you'd be happy to drink on its own. If it tastes bad drinking it by itself it's going to be worse when you cook it down.

Types: Red wine for red meat dishes. White wine for chicken and pork. As far as other types of alcohol, dark beers and ales are good with red meat. Lighter beers for chicken. Cider goes great with pork.

Sherry goes well with any kind of meat and is good in some sweet desserts too. Treat Port wine like red wine from a cooking perspective. Whiskey is good with red meat. Rum is excellent with desserts.

I don't know much about fruit wines, they are a very small niche compared to grape wine. I've tasted a few over the years but I don't know anywhere near enough to be offering advice on them.

That advice is applicable if you have a flyover-tier wine selection or know enough about wine to pick flyover-tier wines and nothing but flyover-tier wines, but otherwise it's kind of misleading. Wine for cooking is chosen by the macro level properties of the wine (sugar levels, the various acids, tannins, color, and so on)

Just saying "sherry" or "white wine" doesn't really give any useful information, that's why good recipes will specify either a specific appellation (and then you can find something with those characteristics even if it's not physically from that place), or will at least attempt to be reasonably specific. If it's not specific then you should ask, is the author from such-and-such a place where it would be understood what wine they probably mean? If there isn't any information even on that level, it's a shit recipe

Btw for the op, the reason "flyover tier wine" is a relevant descriptor is that it describes a certain narrow set of wine styles made for the mass market. For instance, flyover tier zin may well be assumed to be either white zin by the bag, or lodi zin (which is a syrupy, boozy, overbearing style of red zin). Likewise "chardonnay" most likely means full malo with a fuck ton of new oak. Theoretically there exists a balanced coastal kind of zin, and there exists non-malo steel tank chardonnay, but those aren't what are meant unless otherwise specified.

So with flyover tier reds, they do pretty much all taste the same (ever hear a flyover say "all wine is the same"? that's why). It's wine designed by the finest scientists at Constellation Brands. The Starbucks of wine. The McDonalds of wine. You give up the individuality of the wine, but you really do not want individuality when dealing with source ingredients of that caliber. You want that McDonalds burger medium rare? No. You want it to taste like science, not food.

>flyover ad infinitum
lol... get over yourself :)

Oh yeah and inb4 some pedant starts screeching that xeres is an appellation, yes I get it you have wikipedia and really want to tell me about the judgment of paris. Still doesn't mean "sherry" actually means anything useful unless you only have flyover sherry (i.e., Harvey's)

I keep boxed wine for cooking.

It's plentiful, keeps well, you don't need to waste a whole bottle of wine if you just need a splash for a meal deglazing a pan or something, and it's actually pretty good.

Boxed wine is a chef's best friend.

>you don't need to waste a whole bottle of wine if you just need a splash for a meal deglazing a pan or something

>not allowing a banana to fuck your wine bottles to keep them sealed after opening

Those are silly but also not very effective.

I have a vacuum dohickey like pic related to do that, and it works OK, but I only ever really like using them with white wines. Reds I feel don't keep as well.

Plus with boxes you just get more. It's a good investment.

Fair enough. I will say that I often prefer reds the day after I've opened them, and at the very least, I like to taste them fresh and one day out.

A day after opening lets it mellow out a bit, so you can taste different flavors than the bright parts you get immediately after uncorking.

Okay yes, letting reds aerate is a good thing, but they don't last anywhere near a box of wine.

Note: I'm not saying boxed wines are that great, though they're perfectly drinkable. They just are very useful as kitchen staples if you like cooking with wine and getting drunk.

That's not how you use a penis pump.

I am considering using wine in a tomatillo sauce in the same way as in a tomato sauce. Is this a bad idea? Should I think about using something else?

Eh, don't use it on the whole batch.

Tomatillo is supposed to be extremely bright and light, with citrus and spices, and maybe even cream, whereas while wine has acidity, it's still mostly dark flavors, and belongs more in a warm red sauce.

A good rule of thumb for cooking with wine is to try and match the cooking wine with the dish's origin. So let's say you are making risotto; you would want to use a Northern Italian white wine, such as an Orvieto. Now let's say you are making ragù napolitano; For this, use a Southern Italian red wine, such as an aglianico. This applies for all wine growing regions; a beef bourguignon should use Burgundian red wine, for example.

This rule also works well for other alcohols; an Irish shepherd's pie should have Irish stout, American chili should have an American lager, etc.

What your saying sounds good in theory, but in practice that's just silly.

Chili vastly benefits from something like a stout, porter, or even a wheat beer over a lager. You can make beef burgundies take on all sorts of interesting flavors by using complex, dry reds from any part of the world.

It's an easy way not to mess shit up. You can always mess with it down the line but it makes sense to start with the basics.

I'll echo this guy.
You will never fuck up by keeping it local. Experimentation could improve or ruin a dish.

Would a white wine work better or will it come with the same problems? Then again I suppose I could just use whiskey with tomatillo since it also works with citrus or go with the classic tequila.

I'd do white wine over whiskey.

I don't know what you mean by "in the same way as a tomato sauce", since most people make really shit tomato sauce. That said your idea of white wine sounds fine. I'd suggest a pinot gris or a riesling. Obviously, alsacian

Ignore the sperg talking about "dark flavors", it's getting into "not even wrong" territory

Don't ever buy "cooking wine" because it is salted and tastes like shit. Spend $10-15 for a bottle that isn't a super corporate engineered "wine". Whatever wine you cook with, air on the side of dry and less acidic. Buy your wines from an actual wine store where the owners and staff have tasted the wine. Wine is usually used in cooking for braising/poaching liquids and pan sauces.

Cooking with liquor/liquer is a bit different. Cognac, sherry, and madeira are used in a lot of classical French sauces and glaces. Whiskey is used in some savory Americana type foods-- you'll see some people add it to chili or barbecue sauce. You'll see rum used in baking sometimes. You'll see vodka used in pseudo-Italian tomato sauces. Beer is also great for some stews and sauces.

Be sure to boil whatever booze you're cooking with for a minute to evaporate the alcohol. Also, keep in mind that the flavor of the wine/spirit you're cooking with will become significantly more concentrated if you allow it to reduce. So if you're braising chicken with white wine, you might want to use half white wine, half chicken stock. If you're cooking beans with beer, you might want to use half beer, half water, since they really soak up a lot of liquid and could very well end up way, way too beery if you use nothing but. Also, it's hardly economical to blow a whole six pack of beer on a batch of beans.