Cooking-with-wine myth exploded

[Fat Guy]

Julia Moskin did a piece in today's New York Times dining section wherein she explodes the myth of "Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink."

A combination of taste tests and interviews, the article establishes quite clearly that cooking with el-cheapo wine is just fine. A "Two-Buck Chuck" selection from Trader Joe's bested a $70 Barolo in one test, with every member of the seven-person tasting panel ranking it higher. Among her conclusions:

Over all, wines that I would have poured down the drain rather than sip from a glass were improved by the cooking process, revealing qualities that were neutral at worst and delightful at best. On the other hand, wines of complexity and finesse were flattened by cooking — or, worse, concentrated by it, taking on big, cartoonish qualities that made them less than appetizing.

It wasn’t that the finished dishes were identical — in fact, they did have surprisingly distinct flavors — but the wonderful wines and the awful ones produced equally tasty food, especially if the wine was cooked for more than a few minutes.

Like almost everybody writing on the subject of cooking with wine, Moskin forgets to mention (or maybe doesn't know) that it's a simple matter to freeze leftover wine in a zipper bag for use later in cooking. But that's not really the focus of the piece, so no big deal.

[paulraphael]

The exhaustive information on wine in Peterson's Sauces book corroborates this.

He doesn't suggest that all wine is equal in cooking, but that the qualities that make a wine suitable for a particular sauce are often completely different than the ones that make it delicious to drink.

According to Peterson, cooking will destroy light fruity flavors, many of the aromatic compounds, and almost all of a wine's subtlety. But it can be important to cook with a wine that has a lot of body, a lot of acidity (or very little), a lot of residual sugar (or very little), etc., depending on the application.

I think there are some wines you'd choose not to cook with, for the same reasons you'd chose not to drink them. Some wines just taste terrible. I don't mean flabby, or unintneresting ... I mean terrible flavor. There's a chance that really assertive off tastes will survive cooking and wreak havoc with some sauces. 2 Buck Chuck wouldn't fit this category for most people, I suspect.

Edited March 21, 2007 by paulraphael (log)

[Busboy]

I've always thought that that rule of thumb must have arisen when you could get Grand Cru Bordeaux for twenty bucks and a decent village Burgundy for ten (ie in my culinary youth). When I make duck braised in Sauternes (note to self: braise ducks in sauternes this weekend) I'm hardly going to throw a hundred dolars worth of sticky in the pot when I can get a nice Greek Muscat for eight bucks a bottle.

It always seemed off to me that people who would argue the proper temperature at which a wine should be served almost down to the exact degree and who would be horrified to hear that it weas stored in an unconditioned warehouse, would not expect that boiling the wine wouldn't have a negative effect on the flavor. (If I recall correctly, one of the raps against Kosher wine is that it has to be heated, which kills of a lot of the nuance.)

Nice article.

[JohnL]

While the article is interesting, I think that the "myth" is largely misunderstood.

The advice to "never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink" originated, I believe, when most super markets offered "cooking wines." These were cheap low alcohol wines that often contained flavorings (herbs etc) and other additives and were not meant for drinking. Cooking sherry was also available.

In fact, these wines were and are (I believe they are still around) pretty vile.

Somehow, the "myth" translated to a belief by some that it refers to low cost wines made for consumption on their own vs higher cost wines. I don't know of anyone who seriously believes that using a very expensive wine like Lafitte is "better" added to a dish than an inexpensive Bordeaux. The key, as stated in the article, is the chemical make up of the wine not its price or complexity.

I think that the piece was a tad overly dramatic but I also believe that someone had to confirm what most sensible people probably suspect. I did have some small problems with Ms Moskin's assigning quality terms. For example what exactly is an "overly sweet German riesling?" In fact, a key quality determinant of German Rieslings is the level of residual sugar. The higher the more desirable or expensive.

There's a bit of the old snobbery at play here as well. Two Buck Chuck is made for drinking. In fact, it is more recommendable for cooking than a more tannic wine that is also made for drinking and is either the same in cost or more. The red herring here is cost. Ms Moskin does a good job proving that in the end, it is not cost but the composition of the wine that determines its suitability in cooking.

[Fat Guy]

I don't know of anyone who seriously believes that using a very expensive wine like Lafitte is "better" added to a dish than an inexpensive Bordeaux.

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But this is exactly the situation with risotto al Barolo, as the article observes.

[Shalmanese]

I'm always perpetually sceptical by the "never cook what you wouldn't drink with" crowd. I've tried cooking with expensive wines and I've tried cooking with $2 chuck and, frankly, they both seem to work about equally as well. I trust my palate more than any guide.

[slkinsey]

I think the rules of thumb should be:

1. Know the properties of the wine you're going to be cooking with (e.g., sweet vs dry, tannic vs soft, etc.) and make sure you're using one with the appropriate characteristics for the effect you want.

2. Don't cook with any wine you couldn't at least choke down if someone had a gun pointed at your head. This primarily means spoiled (corked, etc.) wines and wines with serious off-flavors.

I've always meant to find a decent red and a decent white wine-in-a-box I could keep around for cooking purposes. The thing that's great about the wine-in-a-box delivery system is that the wine is actually inside a bag inside the box. The bag just shrinks in size as wine is poured out the spigot, which means that no air is actually going into the bag -- which means no oxidation, which means you can keep the box around for months and use a bit of wine here and there for cooking as you need it.

Edited March 21, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[weinoo]

I trust my palate more than any guide.

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Me too - especially after I ruined a dish many years ago by cooking with an oaky Cab - totally out of place once it was reduced to tasting like a charred barrel!

[JohnL]

I don't know of anyone who seriously believes that using a very expensive wine like Lafitte is "better" added to a dish than an inexpensive Bordeaux.

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But this is exactly the situation with risotto al Barolo, as the article observes.

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Actually, the Barolo in the risotto proponents pretty much admit that it makes no difference. They do a good job of hedging things. Batali and Ladner.

I suspect the use of expensive Barolo in the Del Posto risotto is more of an affectation to portray the dish as using luxury ingredients in keeping with the restaurant's image. Ladner pretty much admits this. Batali offers the "romance" of the idea but one gets the sense that he really knows that is all it is.

I still believe that the "myth" evolved erroneously being grounded in the very sound advice to not use cheap cooking wines and sherries but rather a wine one would drink on its own (a table wine).

I don't know many chefs amateur or professional who see "add a cup of dry white wine" in a recipe and immediately reach for a bottle of Montrachet. While I believe that many people have suspected the conclusions Moskin reaches, it is nice that the Times has confirmed their suspicions.

[Fat Guy]

John, I'm not sure there's much support for your hunch. Moskin interviewed wine-shop owners who told her customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine. She pointed to a situation where people are wasting expensive Barolo in cooking. I hardly think she's tearing down a straw man. She's commenting on one of cooking's most persistent contemporary myths.

As for derivation, I don't know that there's any evidence to support the claim that the myth mistakenly evolved from the rejection of "cooking wine." The quote from Julia Child certainly doesn't support that claim: "If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one."

[Alex]

(If I recall correctly, one of the raps against Kosher wine is that it has to be heated, which kills of a lot of the nuance.)

 

Nice article.

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Funny you should mention this. I was just reading an excellent article (scroll down the page a bit) in the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine by Daniel Rogov, who has been known to post on eG from time to time. He explains that only some kosher wines, which are termed mevushal, are heated (pasteurized, actually). This is done because, for some observant Jews, if a non-Jew handles the wine, it then becomes non-kosher.

Quoting from the article:

Some Israeli kosher wines are marketed in two versions, regular and mevushal, the mevushal editions destined for highly observant Jews within Israel or abroad. Many of the wines produced in Italy, Chile, Argentina, Spain, France, and the United States are also pasteurized, largely because many kosher restaurants and catering establishments, especially in the United States, will not serve wines that are not mevushal. Top-of-the-line series, however, are usually not pasteurized, as, for example, Covenant, as well as some of Herzog's and Hagafen's California wines. In any case, one should bear in mind that a mevushal wine is no more or less kosher than a wine that is not.

[Fat Guy]

To be continued on another topic, perhaps, but brief pasteurization doesn't necessarily ruin wine. The red wines of Louis Latour, for example, have long been pasteurized and many of them are excellent. Louis Latour is routinely criticized for this practice, but I think one has to do a vertical tasting of Corton Grancey before saying that there's any problem with pasteurizing wine.

[Fat Guy]

While we're on the subject of cooking with wine . . .

I know there are some dishes where a specific style of wine is desirable. For example, you wouldn't make coq au vin with chardonnay. There's a morel dish Jean-Georges makes where if you don't do it with Vin Jaune it doesn't taste right -- I've tried, it's true.

However, when I'm cooking with wine I'm almost always using it for one of two purposes: 1- to deglaze a skillet for a quick pan sauce after cooking, for example, chicken, or 2- as part of a braising liquid. In both cases I'm likely to be using the wine as one of a few ingredients. There will almost always also be some stock, maybe aromatic vegetables in a braise, or some sort of fat in a pan sauce, some seasonings, etc.

I've found that in those applications there's an incredible range of possibilities for what wine you use, and that range encompasses red and white, still and sparkling, dry and dessert wines. Indeed, I use them all at once.

You will usually find, in my freezer, a Zip-Lock bag labeled "wine." Into that bag I pour the leftover bits of whatever bottles I don't finish. This results in a versatile blend that seems to work in any recipe that doesn't require a specialized wine. If you're going to cook with wine, freezing it does no damage (it barely does any damage if you're going to drink it straight). And it's incredibly convenient, because wine doesn't really freeze into a solid mass. With a little leverage you can just scoop out what you need.

[JohnL]

John, I'm not sure there's much support for your hunch. Moskin interviewed wine-shop owners who told her customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine. She pointed to a situation where people are wasting expensive Barolo in cooking. I hardly think she's tearing down a straw man. She's commenting on one of cooking's most persistent contemporary myths.

As for derivation, I don't know that there's any evidence to support the claim that the myth mistakenly evolved from the rejection of "cooking wine." The quote from Julia Child certainly doesn't support that claim: "If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one."

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The derivation is right there in the Time's piece. first sentence!

"In the beginning there was cooking wine..."

This is clearly presented as the impetus for Julia Child's quote. Julia Child recommended using a "good" wine. Not an expensive wine.

What Julia said has nothing to do with cost.

Moskin notes this and then moves on to her thesis which has to do with cost rather than quality. In the course of her investigation she comes across the truth that wine in cooking has more to do with its physical attributes/and flavor profile than its cost. This has been noted by folks from McGee to Peterson.

The issue of the Times piece is "Cheap wine vs expensive wine." For the last twenty years or more myriad food and wine writers have been expounding the virtues of inexpensive quality wines for drinking and noting that cost does not always equate to quality. How one could believe that there is a prevailing "myth" here?

I don't know what wine shop owners are stating that there is a consensus that "customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine." What do they define as "cheap?" This where I believe there is a lot of confusion. Good vs poor, expensive vs cheap. I can see where some people would take the Julia quote to the extreme--if they drink expensive or great wines frequently then they would probably believe that they should cook with these same wines.

Outside of Sutton Place where are all these folks?

Most people spend less than fifteen dollars for wine so if they cook with what they drink (using Julia as a rule of thumb) then alerting them that they could spend less on the wine they use for cooking is a nice tip but IMOP no huge revelation.

Also if there are some wealthy folks who are cooking with the same 1961 First growth Bordeaux they are drinking then they too will now be able to save some money. An equally, less than huge revelation.

What the Time piece does do, I believe, is state the fact that it is not price that determines a wine's suitablity for use in cooking and add some explanation.

Julia's initial advice was good--it still is-- but many people have refined that advice and elaborated upon it. Frankly, I am suprised that Julia herself did not expound upon it at some point.

Anyway, I think we agree the piece is good and the information is good. We can disagree on how revelatory and earth shattering the conclusions are.

[FoodMan]

1. Know the properties of the wine you're going to be cooking with (e.g., sweet vs dry, tannic vs soft, etc.) and make sure you're using one with the appropriate characteristics for the effect you want.

2. Don't cook with any wine you couldn't at least choke down if someone had a gun pointed at your head. This primarily means spoiled (corked, etc.) wines and wines with serious off-flavors.

...we have to add the cardinal rule though

3. Don't cook with 'cooking wine'

I've figured this myth is a myth a long time ago (well actually I think it was Alton Brown who first mentioned that it was BS. He is right.)and my go to white wine is a $4.99 bottle of Pinot Grigio for white wine recipes made by something like Barefoot or such. For red a cheap merlot around the $4-5 range works well. I do like the idea of box wine that keeps for a while though...and the freezing wine slushy option that FG recommends makes a lot of sense only I hardly ever have any wine left .

Speaking of Mario and what he uses, in Heat, Bill Buford specifically tackles that and says that the Beef or short ribs in 'Barolo' are really braised in an affordable California Merlot.

[slkinsey]

1. Know the properties of the wine you're going to be cooking with (e.g., sweet vs dry, tannic vs soft, etc.) and make sure you're using one with the appropriate characteristics for the effect you want.

2. Don't cook with any wine you couldn't at least choke down if someone had a gun pointed at your head. This primarily means spoiled (corked, etc.) wines and wines with serious off-flavors.

...we have to add the cardinal rule though

3. Don't cook with 'cooking wine'

Isn't that covered by #2 above? Cooking wine is in no way drinkable.

[FoodMan]

1. Know the properties of the wine you're going to be cooking with (e.g., sweet vs dry, tannic vs soft, etc.) and make sure you're using one with the appropriate characteristics for the effect you want.

2. Don't cook with any wine you couldn't at least choke down if someone had a gun pointed at your head. This primarily means spoiled (corked, etc.) wines and wines with serious off-flavors.

...we have to add the cardinal rule though

3. Don't cook with 'cooking wine'

Isn't that covered by #2 above? Cooking wine is in no way drinkable.

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not unless it is edited to say "...This primarily means cooking wine, spoiled (corked, etc.) wines and wines with serious off-flavors."

[BekkiM]

I've always meant to find a decent red and a decent white wine-in-a-box I could keep around for cooking purposes.  The thing that's great about the wine-in-a-box delivery system is that the wine is actually inside a bag inside the box.  The bag just shrinks in size as wine is poured out the spigot, which means that no air is actually going into the bag -- which means no oxidation, which means you can keep the box around for months and use a bit of wine here and there for cooking as you need it.

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Now that they're selling box wine in grown-up juice boxes (that is, single serving size), it's an even better option b/c I can open just the sized container that I need. And I could, in a pinch, choke down those wines if required to do so at gun point.

If only they'd do the same thing with sherry and marsala, neither of which I drink, but I love the flavor of in cooking. Can I freeze those in zip locks too?

[Catherine Iino]

Also--I've discovered wine vinegar made from young, fruity wine is much better than the wine vinegar I've made from the remains of older, more tannic, more "sophisticated" wines we tend to drink.

[Richard Kilgore]

John, I'm not sure there's much support for your hunch. Moskin interviewed wine-shop owners who told her customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine. She pointed to a situation where people are wasting expensive Barolo in cooking. I hardly think she's tearing down a straw man. She's commenting on one of cooking's most persistent contemporary myths.

As for derivation, I don't know that there's any evidence to support the claim that the myth mistakenly evolved from the rejection of "cooking wine." The quote from Julia Child certainly doesn't support that claim: "If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one."

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That wine shop owners and staff hear this, as well as a lot of other misunderstandings about wine, is not surprising. The average consumer frequently picks up pieces of advice without really understanding it.

Actually, the Julia quote makes sense in its historical context. At the time she wrote that, there were a lot of truly horrible French wines on the market. She didn't say "great wine to use"; she said "good" and there were a lot that were not. Today we are fortunate to have a great deal of inexpensive, pleasant tasting if not complex, wines available from many parts of the world.

[Tess]

I am enjoying the tips for specific cheap wines (or blends like Fat Guy's) in cooking and would love to hear more. What are some good cheapo ones for such standards as beef bourquignon, coq au vin and white wine or champagne sauces, like the one for scallops in the Les Halles cookbook?

About sherry and marsala-- don't they keep a pretty long time? I use madeira for one recipe only and have never found it to go off.

[JohnL]

John, I'm not sure there's much support for your hunch. Moskin interviewed wine-shop owners who told her customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine. She pointed to a situation where people are wasting expensive Barolo in cooking. I hardly think she's tearing down a straw man. She's commenting on one of cooking's most persistent contemporary myths.

As for derivation, I don't know that there's any evidence to support the claim that the myth mistakenly evolved from the rejection of "cooking wine." The quote from Julia Child certainly doesn't support that claim: "If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one."

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That wine shop owners and staff hear this, as well as a lot of other misunderstandings about wine, is not surprising. The average consumer frequently picks up pieces of advice without really understanding it.

Actually, the Julia quote makes sense in its historical context. At the time she wrote that, there were a lot of truly horrible French wines on the market. She didn't say "great wine to use"; she said "good" and there were a lot that were not. Today we are fortunate to have a great deal of inexpensive, pleasant tasting if not complex, wines available from many parts of the world.

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Basically, the Times piece revisits Julia Child's original advice and pretty much agrees with it.

Moskin updates things a bit.

The basic advice is use a good quality table wine to cook with.

The underlying issue is the price and quality relationship of good quality table wine in today's market.

The one manager of a wine shop quoted in the piece notes it is difficult to get a customer to accept that the store's $5.99 or $6.99 Portugese wine he recommends for cooking is "too cheap." The problem is not cooking related it is that customers have not accepted that these wines are good to drink period. I believe he is misreading them. Again, a case of people confusing cost or price with quality. For years the wine industry has too often sold wine on this basis. It is no wonder people are confused.

Today, $7 is a fair price for a good basic table wine for drinking and cooking! He needs to sell his customers on the wine as good to drink before they buy into it as good to cook with.

The slippery slope is for people to categorize wine into drinking wines and cooking wines. This is the essence of what Julia Child was saying. It was pertinent then and it is pertinent now!

[Kouign Aman]

Cooking wine has a seriously "off" flavor, from the expected range for wine. Its salted.

I think slkinsey's pegged it.

[russ parsons]

i know most of you are way too young to remember, but there was a time when there was a LOT of bad wine on the market--not cooking wine (which was heavily salted to discourage drinking), but wines with significant chemical flaws. in fact, i'd say that the greatest advantage wine drinkers today have is that technological advances have pretty much eliminated these from the marketplace. even wines that were once notorious (reds from teh south of france, certain italian whites ... most anything from california's central valley), are now clean enough to drink.

as for $2 chuck, i don't think that's a contradiction to the "wine you wouldn't drink" rule at all. it's a perfectly clean, simple wine. there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. one might not CHOOSE to drink it, but one certainly could.

eta: in the piedmont, in my experience, risotto al barolo was made with lesser wine (not all barolo is created the same). i do think the use of a conterno single-vineyard in cooking would be not just ostentatious, but sacreligious.

Edited March 21, 2007 by russ parsons (log)

[Magictofu]

3. Don't cook with 'cooking wine'

There are some "gourmet" cooking wines available for a selection of varietals which have a good reputation. They not dirt cheap however and compare easily with with $6-$10 bottles considering the smaller size of the bottles. According to some, they shine particularly well in sauces. I have never tried them but I can certainly imagine someone creating a wine for its culinary properties and not for its "drinkability". I remember reading about kitchen tests made using a few brands of such wines compared with drinking wines of the same varietals and, according to the author, they all outperformed the drinking wines.