Best wines for cooking

[Wilfrid]

Fat Geezer mentioned this on the quick gravy thread, and it was already on my mind. I use a lot of wine in cooking (pan sauces, reductions, braising liquid), and was disgruntled recently at the quantity of perfectly drinkable Shiraz which got used up making a reduction. I know not to use ghastly, undrinkable wine in cooking - if the wine is sour and vinegary, it will make a sour and vinegary sauce - but on the other hand, to paraphrase John Arlott, one does feel mean about adding Lafite of a good year to the onion soup.

How do you strike a balance between quality and thrift? Are there wines to avoid cooking with? How big a role does wine play in your kitchen?

[Jinmyo]

If a wine is going to be served with a meal, then I use that wine for cooking. Granted, the wines tend to be Shiraz or Soave or such. Nothing too expensive. But I find the echoing of the flavour by using the same wine to be interesting.

[tommy]

i think you've got it figured out there wilfie.

i stay away from heavily oaked wines, as they produce some nasty reductions. although, i don't have those wines in my home to begin with.

the inexpensive cotes du rhone that i drink as an every day wine usually doesn't cut it for a slow and long cooked wine based dish, like braised short ribs. i actually use a, *gasp*, zin for that. i think the fruit and sugar add a lot. at the end of the day, you're going for flavor, which is coming from fruit and sugar for the most part. methinks.

[nightscotsman]

Cooks Illustrated actually did a story about this last year. Their conclusion after much testing was that blended wines (we're talking red here) worked the best. I've been using a blend they recommended from Coppola that works very nicely and is very inexpensive from Trader Joes. It's called Rosso and is mostly Zinfandel with some Syrah and Cabernet added to round things out.

[Wilfrid]

If a wine is going to be served with a meal, then I use that wine for cooking.

My usual practice, but that's what started me fretting. I used too much cooking, and then got thirsty before I'd finished my cheese. Open two bottles?

[Adam Balic]

Sure. And if there is any left from the bottle you used for cooking, well that's the cooks portion.

[Fat Guy]

Unless a dish relies very heavily on a certain kind of wine -- like one of Daniel Boulud's reductions -- my maximum price point for cooking wine is $3.99 per 750ml bottle. There's plenty of acceptable product in that price range and a couple of times a year I swing by K&D (the closest good place to my home) and pick up a case each of cheapshit red and white, which I use for cooking. No or little oak is my only serious criterion. If I don't plan to exhaust the bottle within a couple of days I always have the option of pouring whatever is left into a Zip-Loc baggie and freezing it -- for cooking purposes there's nothing wrong with using frozen wine.

Right now I'm at the end of my Chantefleur (Syrah and Chardonnay) supply, but I have no particular commitment to the brand. I will add, though, that last time I checked this is what they were using as the standard cooking wine at Lespinasse.

[macrosan]

...and is very inexpensive from Trader Joes. It's called Rosso...

How do you pronounce that, Scottie ?

A couple of weeks ago, my wife made a chicken stir-fry dish that she does regularly (and it's terrific). On this occasion, it tasted kinda funny, almost "off", so I asked what she'd done. She told me she couldn't find any of the "usual" white wine in the cupboard (that's a nice, cheap Soave at £4 a bottle) so she had to open a bottle of Premier Cru Chablis that someone gave me a couple of months ago

The wine she left over was excellent, but the stir-fry tasted awful.

[Wilfrid]

Bad luck, Martin.

Steven, I am nowhere near as low as $3.99 a bottle for cooking wine. I have, in the past, tried those unspeakable wines sold in supermarkets at those kinds of prices, but they make unspeakable sauces too. Are you talking liquor store wines, but just very cheap. Think I can get them in Manhattan (K&D I don't know, but I guess it's UES)?

And thanks for the freezing tip, which hadn't occurred to me.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

i stay away from heavily oaked wines, as they produce some nasty reductions.  although, i don't have those wines in my home to begin with.

This really depends on what you're using the wine for. A Rioja reduction stands on its own as sauce. On the other hand, very acidic wines when part of a reduction just taste very very very acidic. So it's best to avoid things like vinho verde and Albariño. Gewurtztraminer is pretty good at retaining its character in the cooking process and there is also Verjus especially for cooking certain dishes.

There are three basic rules of thumb when selecting and using wine for cooking. First, use a decent variety; there's no point cocking up a dish by trying to save money on the ingredients, but this is more of an issue in the U.K. & U.S. where alcohol is heavily taxed. Second, match the wine to the ingredients much in the same way as you choose wine to drink with food. This may be a highly personal choice, but it should never be an arbitrary one. Finally, always boil off the alcohol (which will otherwise ruin the dish) and flame the wine before adding it to anything. It is debatable whether flaming actually alters the flavour of the reduction, but it is a way of actually seeing that the alcohol has more or less disappeared from the liquor, it is also quite dramatic and makes cooking more exciting.

[Fat Guy]

K & D Wine & Spirits

1336 Madison Avenue (Btwn. 95th & 96th Streets)

(212) 289-1818

Right now they've got a Trebbiano from Citra for $3.99. I'll probably pick up a bottle soon and, if it's acceptable, I'll get a case and it will be my cooking-white for the next year. (With the exception, as I mentioned, of dishes that truly call for a specific wine.)

[Adam Balic]

Vin Santo. Makes a good reduction for pork or veal.

LML - does wine flambe? I didn't think that it had a high enough alcohol content or maybe I am just crap at flambe?

[Fat Guy]

Yes, but LML uses a flamethrower.

[Adam Balic]

Oh right. I have seen that in action.

[Jinmyo]

i stay away from heavily oaked wines, as they produce some nasty reductions.  although, i don't have those wines in my home to begin with.

This really depends on what you're using the wine for. A Rioja reduction stands on its own as sauce. On the other hand, very acidic wines when part of a reduction just taste very very very acidic. So it's best to avoid things like vinho verde and Albariño. Gewurtztraminer is pretty good at retaining its character in the cooking process and there is also Verjus especially for cooking certain dishes.

There are three basic rules of thumb when selecting and using wine for cooking. First, use a decent variety; there's no point cocking up a dish by trying to save money on the ingredients, but this is more of an issue in the U.K. & U.S. where alcohol is heavily taxed. Second, match the wine to the ingredients much in the same way as you choose wine to drink with food. This may be a highly personal choice, but it should never be an arbitrary one. Finally, always boil off the alcohol (which will otherwise ruin the dish) and flame the wine before adding it to anything. It is debatable whether flaming actually alters the flavour of the reduction, but it is a way of actually seeing that the alcohol has more or less disappeared from the liquor, it is also quite dramatic and makes cooking more exciting.

M'lud M, a very useful post, if I might say so. Though I, like so many (I have received several PMs), read most of thine posts while sheilding my eyes from thy radiance and feel exhausted and listless for several days afterwards I should like to see more of such comments tumble from thy fingertips and through the keyboard into our waiting optic nerves.

Really.

ediot:

I can't spell "to". Sad.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

LML - does wine flambe?

If you pour it into an already hot saucepan it will flambe with the best of them.

[Priscilla]

All true, what LML said. (Which is usually the case, though sometimes the LML truths are hard truths.)

Steven Shaw, am I misunderstanding, which happens all the time, or have you said Lespinasse uses a wine that retails near $3.99 in its kitchen? If true, this is good news indeed. That is more or less the price point I shoot for, too. Of course it's a Trader Joe's $3.99...a supermarket $3.99 is usually utter swill.

[Wilfrid]

If you pour cold wine into an already hot saucepan and slam the lid down, the whole thing explodes.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

If you pour cold wine into an already hot saucepan and slam the lid down, the whole thing explodes. 

Sounds like an excellent idea.

[Shiva]

The topic's been pretty well covered, but I'll add that I like to cook with wines that are sweeter and fruitier than wines I would choose to drink, FWIW.

My sister turned me on to C R (Carlo Rossi?) Cellars Fortissimo a while ago and now I always have a jug on hand.

[Fat Guy]

have you said Lespinasse uses a wine that retails near $3.99 in its kitchen?

When I did a week-long ride-along in the Lespinasse kitchen a couple of years ago, the basic red cooking wine was Chantefleur Syrah (there are specific dishes where other wines are called for -- some costing as much as $30 per bottle, I think -- but Chantefleur was the wine used for general applications). I subsequently purchased a couple of cases at $3.29 a bottle at 67 Wine & Spirits. I don't know the current price, but I bet it's way up because the wine was better than its price.

Pro chefs: What's the basic cooking wine in your kitchens? Nick G.? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

[Priscilla]

Interesting. I would guess hope assume that there would be designated fine wines for designated dishes in good kitchens, as you Steven Shaw indicate.

But it is good to know there is also sensible use of perfectly good less-expensive wines where they will be suffcient. (Like my kitchen?) Also, a self-respecting fine restaurant kitchen won't be deciding solely by price, either, will it? The everyday wine used for cooking must be more than decent, not just a price point.

(Yet more ideas home cooks can lift from professional kitchens. Will they never end? Somebody oughta write a book....)

[ngatti]

Pro chefs: What's the basic cooking wine in your kitchens? Nick G.? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Blossom Hill Cab and Blossom Hill Chard (not very oaky). I guess they'd retail in the 3-6 dollar range. The Opici days are over. We will occasionaly get a nice bottle from the bar. Sometimes we need a specialty wine.

Nick