Wine is a drink that is very often used as an additional ingredient for preparing delicious dishes. The use of wine in cooking dates back to ancient times – then it was used as a marinade for meat to keep it longer. Today wine is used in hundreds of dishes, from appetizers to desserts.
There are various ways to use wine while cooking. As a marinade – before cooking, wine is added and during cooking – the longer it evaporates, the more refined the taste. And also at the end for a spectacular presentation – then the alcohols in the wine will be preserved and this fact will need to be taken into account.
Not every wine goes well with a particular dish. Wine is an acidic ingredient that helps meat to taste more tender or to reveal the flavor of fish. Astringent wine is better suited to dishes from duck, goose, and soft wine – to seafood and veal.
A young, dense wine with earthy aromas, used to make red meat, root vegetable soup or beef. Young, strong red wines work well as a sauce base.
Dry white wines go well with fish, seafood, poultry, pork, beef and creamy sauces. Dry white wines are most often used for seafood soups; sweet white wines go well with desserts. Sherry should be used for vegetable and chicken soups.
On the basis of wine and juices, after frying the meat, delicious and original sauces are obtained. Wine mixed with meat juice loses its strength, but gains a rich taste. To thicken this sauce, you can add a little flour or starch to it.
To prepare fish sauce, wine is poured into the pan after frying the fish, boiled down and mixed with heavy cream. The acid helps curl the protein in the cream, so creamy sauces with wine are thick and tender.
Cooking soups with wine has its own secrets. The wine goes very well with cheese soups, as it lowers the melting point of the cheese. But the roots are tough because of the tartaric acids. Therefore, it is better to add wine to such soups at the very end of cooking.
Fresh fruits or berries with powdered sugar and young sparkling wine are the most popular dessert in grape and wine producing countries. You can also make a delicious dessert with dried fruit boiled in wine, jelly, or mousse. But wine is rarely added to baked goods.