If you’re going to cook with wine, I’d suggest you get a cheap brand of wine—because it’ll all just probably go into the pot anyway. I got mine at a local Walmart browsing the alcohol aisle—and I didn’t have a clue what I was looking for.
I mean great googly moogly—there are so many to choose from! What’s the big difference between all the different types and brands anyway? The recipe called for “white wine”, so I grabbed a white wine once my eyes could zero in on any particular one.
I’m not very experienced with wine or wine-cooking, but I remember when I first came across a recipe I wanted to try that called for a white wine. Though I went to the store to get the necessary ingredients for making the recipe, I couldn’t help but think my food was going to have a strong taste of alcohol and reek of the stuff.
How wrong I was, indeed. I mean, I even had one recipe that called for a whole bottle of wine and had the fish floating inside an entire pot of it boiling away—but when it was all said and done I couldn’t taste any alcohol in the fish at all. Go figure.
So, if you have nothing else to do today, give cooking with wine a try and see how you like it—whether you put the wine into a recipe or whether you drink it as you cook along makes no difference—it’s still “cooking with wine.”
Take-Away Life Lesson: Makes you wonder why a recipe calls for 1/2 cup wine during the cooking process if you can’t really tell a difference from if you hadn’t cooked with it at all.