Wine in a braise

[ned]

Last night a chef friend—Todd--and I braised a quarter of a baby goat in red wine and veal stock. I started by browning the goat in grape seed oil. Following that, I removed the goat and browned mirepoix vegetables and a couple of pieces of mildly salt-cured pork belly. Then I deglazed with three quarters of a bottle of red wine. Shortly thereafter and before the wine did any significant reducing, I added the veal stock which was a large frozen hunk. And herein lies the reason for my post.

Todd looked over from what he was doing and said whoa, whoa, you’ve got to let the wine reduce before you add the stock. Respecting his superior knowledge I pulled out the stock but demanded that he explain himself. He said that as the wine reduces, its flavors change in a way that is different from what would happen if wine stayed at temperature for a certain length of time.

Complex flavors result from the sugars doing their thing in response to heat. I don’t understand why those sugars would combine and complexify in a way that is different while the water is evaporating from it versus while wine is simmering in a closed environment maintaining its water content as in a braise. I am not talking about concentration of flavor. Certainly as wine reduces, its flavors concentrate. I’m talking about the quality of the flavors in these two cases.

In response to this discussion Todd and I did a little experiment with sliced onions, white wine and beef stock. (French onion soup was the result) We did two versions, one in which the wine was reduced before beef stock was added and the other in which the wine and the beef stock were added at more or less the same time. Both were then covered and left to simmer for 35 minutes. In the former case the result was mellow with nice acidity and sweetness. In the latter case, there was a slightly acrid flavor, a harshness in the back of the mouth. In both cases the flavors were equally concentrated. Were the test a braise rather than a soup, extending cooking time and infusing so much other flavor, I’m not certain I would have been able to tell the difference between the two.

I feel that there are things I don’t understand about what is going on in wine during this process. I would very much welcome knowledge anyone has to add on this subject.

[MobyP]

I'm not an expert on this, but I always supposed it had to do firstly with the proportionality of liquids, and secondly for the ability of the alcohol to be burned off, rather than be diluted.

In sauce making, for instance, you often add a few tablespoons of vinegar (white, red) which you then reduce to nothing, keeping something of the aromatics, without too much of the acidity. The same goes for the use of brandy, armagnac, etc - keeping the flavour, whilst being rid of the larger amounts of alcohol.

With braising, I imagine that reducing a bottle of wine down to (say) half a cup first gets rid of the alcohol, then the water, leaving the sugars and flavour components. Having reduced it down to this concentrate, you're then in the position to control the liquid content via the addition of water or stock.

must run. more later.

[paul o' vendange]

If I understand correctly, you are talking about braising in a closed environment with no appreciable concentration of the wine until, possibly, later, when you would concentrate the braising jus. You raise an interesting question. I think two thoughts are at play here.

Eliminating concentration of flavor, and the effect of raw alcohol on food, you are left with the chemical reactions of food taking place under lower moisture v. higher moisture conditions - i.e., reduced jus v. non-reduced jus, and the chemical reactions taking place here which may impart different flavor characteristics. The only area I can think of which may be germane here is caramelization, protein-sugar complexation, maillard reaction, whatever you want to call it. All I can think of here is the local temperature differential (the difference in temperature between the braising pan surface, against the heat, v. the temperature throughout the jus) may be more pronounced under a lower moisture condition than a higher moisture condition - in other words, when you reduce the wine, you encourage maillard reaction at the bottom surface of your cooking vessel to a greater extent than when there is a greater moisture content, the latter condition acting, to an extent, like a "temperature relief valve," therefore limiting maillard reaction.

I am not sure how strong this effect may be, if my theory even holds water. I think the greater concern here would be the effect of raw alcohol on your food. I learned this most strikingly when doing marinades. I used to marinate meats in raw wine and aromatics, and was never satisfied with the end result, particularly when using red wine. Now, I burn off the alcohol and proceed. Voila, problem solved. In the words of Thomas Keller, raw alcohol "pickles" meat, and cooked marinades are de rigeur in my kitchen. But here, it is only necessary to rid the wine of the alcohol, which I do by bringing to a simmer then flaming away. Reducing would ensure the alcohol is removed.

This, and concentration, are what I would guess would be the benefit of reduction before braising.

In my own world, my method for lamb shoulder is to marinate them in a cooked marinade of aromatics and white wine, make "ballons" out of the shoulders with herbs de provence and garlic, sear them well, then deglaze the pan with the marinade; but I do not reduce the marinade. To this, I add lamb stock, tomatoes, a ton of parsley and thyme, orange peel, and braise away - "epaules a la sept heures." After, in a hot oven, I glaze the meat with some of the defatted jus; and the balance of the jus I reduce to a syrupy consistency for reglazing at service. But I do not reduce until after the braise.

Cheers,

Paul

[ned]

Paul, thanks for your thoughtful response. It's led me to realize that my question can be pared way down. Also that the experiment we did last night wasn't scientiic enough. Here's a better one:

There are two pots.

In one pot four cups of wine are reduced to 1/4 a cup and then 3 3/4 cups of water are added back in. Say for the sake of argument that this process takes 15 minutes. The pot is covered and the liquid simmers for 45 minutes.

In the other pot, four cups of the same wine are simmered covered for an hour.

At the end of the hour do the two liquids taste the same?

Needless to say I'm going to try this tonight and see what happens.

PS: I don't think, strictly speaking, this is a question about maillard reactions. I'm not thinking about bringing the wine down quite that far. If I did that, certainly there would be a difference.

[FaustianBargain]

Todd looked over from what he was doing and said whoa, whoa, you’ve got to let the wine reduce before you add the stock.  Respecting his superior knowledge I pulled out the stock but demanded that he explain himself.  He said that as the wine reduces, its flavors change in a way that is different from what would happen if wine stayed at temperature for a certain length of time.[...] Certainly as wine reduces, its flavors concentrate.  I’m talking about the quality of the flavors in these two cases.

In response to this discussion Todd and I did a little experiment with sliced onions, white wine and beef stock.  (French onion soup was the result)  We did two versions, one in which the wine was reduced before beef stock was added and the other in which the wine and the beef stock were added at more or less the same time.  Both were then covered and left to simmer for 35 minutes.  In the former case the result was mellow with nice acidity and sweetness.  In the latter case, there was a slightly acrid flavor, a harshness in the back of the mouth.  In both cases the flavors were equally concentrated.  Were the test a braise rather than a soup, extending cooking time and infusing so much other flavor, I’m not certain I would have been able to tell the difference between the two. 

I feel that there are things I don’t understand about what is going on in wine during this process.  I would very much welcome knowledge anyone has to add on this subject.

←

My understanding...wine adds flavour. The two main components are the acids and the alcohol. Sugars might vary. The idea of letting wine simmer or to flambe it is to burn off the alcohol. Sans alcohol, the wine becomes mellow and 'soft'. Reduction results in concentration of flavour and the acidity doesnt decrease. IIRC, the acidity of the wine concentrates as you reduce it and the reduction doesnt remove the acidity from the wine. You are merely 'packing' the wine flavour more tightly into a smaller volume space.

[Shalmanese]

The answer is fairly simple. Take a deep whiff of a pot with wine reducing in it. Anything you smell is flavour that is escaping from the pot and into the air. Whether the effect is significant enough to be noticable and under what conditions is another matter.

My initial guess is that the thing you would notice the most is the reduction in alcohol. Boiling a high concentration of alcohol leads to more being evaporated in a given period of time.

Acidity might be affected, depending on what sort of acids are in there. Acetic acid definately boils off as anyone who has every made a balsamic reduction knows. OTOH, long simmered wine sauces are still appreciably acidic so who knows.

I doubt significant maillard reactions would be happening, a dry wine should have a fairly negligible sugar content AFAIK and fruity/sweet wines seem to have a rather limited use in cooking.

[Really Nice!]

...Complex flavors result from the sugars doing their thing in response to heat...

←

It can't be sugar. What kind of wine are you using? With a dry white or red you're not going to have much more than a 0.2 percent sugar level. The average person can't begin perceiving sugar levels in a medium until it hits 1 percent. And the driest champagnes have just 6 grams of sugar per liter.

I'm not sure that you'll find an answer about what happens to wine at a chemical level when it's reduced for no one even knows what happens when yeast is added to the wine when it's being made. (Or when it's being added to beer or flour, for that matter.)

Wine is made up of sugars (the six-carbon fermentables glucose and fructose, and the five-carbon nonfermentables aribinose, zylose, and fhamnose). These five-carbon sugars are the ones that are left behind even in the driest of wines.

The other components in wine are acids (tartaric, malic, and citric), alcohol (ethyl), phenolic compounds (pigments, tannins, and 'flavor precursors'), aldehydes (oxidized alcohols), and esters (aromatic compounds).

The average wine is composed of some 500 molecular components; 200 or so contribute to its aroma and bouquet.

This all said, mostly what you do when you reduce a liquid is remove the water, and in the case of wine, the alcohol. With less water you are falsely perceiving a concentration of what's left behind, when in fact what's left behind hasn't become more concentrated, there's just less water to dilute it.

[Brad Ballinger]

A couple of comments to add here.

1. Not as much alcohol evaporates in an open pot as one might think. Burning off doesn't even get rid of all of it. But it does get rid of some of it, and keeps the liquid from tasting too alcoholic.

2. You do not need to reduce wine before adding stock. It pretty much depends on what you are cooking and for how long. Wine reduction usually takes place in stove top preparations of sauces. This is done to remove some alcohol, to slightly thicken the liquid, and to concentrate flavors. For braises, don't worry. And if you want to use the braising liquid as a sauce, you can reduce afterward. There are many braising recipes that call for up to an entire bottle of red wine.

[Shalmanese]

I think it depends on how much you are reducing. Keller frequently reduces entire bottles of wine down to a glaze which I presume would get rid of at least 99% of the alcohol.

Reducing by 1/2 should reduce at least 1/2 the alcohol since alcohol evaporates easier than water. If I rememebr my HS chemistry experiment properly, a single evaporation at simmer of 14% alcohol ended up with about 25% alcohol in the final solution. Working with these numbers, I'm guessing you should be able to, at best remove about 75% of the alcohol with a 1/2 reduction. Less if you boil rather than simmer.

The problem with reducing the final sauce instead of the wine is that you end up reducing much less proportion wise of the final sauce and the concentration is lower so it's less efficient at removing alcohol.

[RETREVR]

Keep it simple people. Chemestry is fun to know, but it isn't that difficult.

Chemistry aside...

It depends what you are trying to do. I personally will always add the wine first to deglaze and burn off some alcohol. This initial flash will round out the wine a bit. At this point you have a decision to make as to what you want to do with the flavor. It also depends on the stock you are using. If I am making a rich vin rouge pan sauce, I will deglaze and let the wine reduce quite a bit before adding stock, and then reduce again. If I am making lighter jus for a roast, I deglaze with wine, let reduce just slightly, add stock and reduce slightly. All the same ingredients, just different sauces.

Not realy though. I guess it comes down to this.

Do you want to reduce your stock with wine...

OR

Do you want to reduce your stock with reduced wine.

It is really like making a decision betwene fresh herbs or dried herbs.

Take a sip of wine, and take a sip of reduced wine, and make a decision as to which one would better flavor your stock.

By adding the wine and stock at the same time, you are then reducing them both together at the same rate. It would seem odd to me that your stock needs exactly the same amount of reduction as any given bottle of wine.....every time.

Be carefull...many wines will become bitter when over-reduced.