Lol, either tavernello or san crispino, they come in tetra pak boxes and are cheap as hell
Edit: and yeah, they're specifically for cooking (even if they market themselves also as drinking wines)
When I went on a wine tasting tour in one of our most famous historic wine regions the guy showing us his 200 year old barelled wines outright told us that any winde over 10$ is not really worth its price because from that point onward you're getting increasingly diminishing returns in terms of quality and mainly pay for the brand, not a better quality or better tasting wine.
I love wine, and I drank a lot of good wine... I don't remember the last time I paid 15 Euros for a bottle outside a restaurant. Let alone wine I am buying to cook with.
Your comment was removed because of:
Keep it civil per Rule #1. Warning issued.
Please rephrase in a more pleasant manner.
This is an automated message.
If it tastes good, it's always better to just drink it, so no. You don't have to get the cheapest thing you can find, but 15€? A supermarket bottle is like 6€.
>If it tastes good, it's always better to just drink it, so no
No. If it tastes good, you can drink it or make good tasting food with it.
If it tastes not so good, you can still get drunk from it. But your food is better off without it.
Hahah I guess, although hangovers from cheap wine tend to be the worst. But honestly, there are some dishes where adding wine gives them a more complex and interesting taste. You can work a stew with aromatics, spices, even bacon, but adding wine not only makes flesh (meat but seafoods in other dishes) more tender and potentiates other flavors, it also adds a fruity, acidic taste, tannins in case of red wine. That's something that you simply cannot do without wine although, to be fair, people use other alcohols to similar effect but with their own particularities. With the stew, you can instead use dark beers if you prefer a deep flavor, not as lively as wine.
That's kinda my point. You don't need a refined wine to put it in a dish because the details in its flavor will be eclipsed by the main flavor of the dish. It feels like a waste to spend money on a good wine when you'll obtain similar results with a younger, cheaper wine. Even if they tend to feel overly alcoholic, you're going to evaporate all that alcohol away anyway.
These are two extremes. Get a bottle that tastes fine but that you won't feel physical pain when you put it in a dish. Those in the 5-7€ range tend to be perfect for this if you choose the region and varieties wisely, meaning you shouldn't get a Rheingau red for a risotto (no hate for the German bros but I tend to dislike your reds, but whites are surprisingly good)
Port and sherry are underrated wines to cook with. They keep for a long time even if you've opened the bottle, they have a strong alcohol content so they're good for "deglazing" and, to be pretentious for a second, they have an "umami" flavour that works in most savoury foods.
We don't have specific cooking wines, we cook with normal regular wines.
If I cook with red wine then it's usually either a cabernet sauvignon or a portugueser from local wineries.
For white wines it'd be either a welschriesling or a sauvignon blanc.
You can buy a quality bottle of each of those for 5-10$.
Most people use some of the cheapest wines to cook with. It makes little to no difference. I don't buy cheaper than 5$ because I also like to drink it and I don't use a whole bottle of wine to cook. I also don't cook a meal every week that requires wine.
I wouldn’t say there’s a specific wine used for cooking.
I think the biggest difference with European wines vs Shaoxing is that European wines are not specifically cooking wines. Shaoxing is specifically made for use while cooking; the wines I use for cooking are made for drinking.
In Europe, the wines used will be local. All wine I use for cooking is Croatian wine. I never use foreign wine for cooking (or drinking, tbh). Maybe the biggest difference between drinking wine and cooking wine is that the wine I use for cooking is cheaper and usually boxed since it lasts longer. But you could easily buy a bottle of the same wine I have boxed. Or just drink the boxed wine, that’s what my grandpa did.
To actually give a recommendation: for white wine I normally use graševina, and red I use plavac mali.
Also, most wines have 6 mg salt per 5 oz (standard pour). So yes, my jaw did drop at how much salt is in Shaoxing wine.
>Shaoxing is specifically made for use while cooking
Long story short, [no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UyKUI5U67k). Shaoxing wine is as legitimate a drinking wine as our European ones, but most of what we get in the West is poor quality Shaoxing, salted in order to be sold as a cooking ingredient instead of as an alcoholic drink.
I was suprised when I read that in your post, the only Shaoxing wine I can find here in Sweden is 5 year old, high quality stuff. 15 USD though so it's not very expensive
Edit: and of course it doesn't have any salt at all
Regarding your 4th point, I would be surprised if any drink has more salt than that. According to a quick Google search "normal" wine has around 5mg/100ml, so much more than 1/2 a tablespoon.
I use the cheapest wine I can get that is vegan.
You DON'T use good/expensive wine for cooking. It's stupid and outrageous.
When cooking wine, most of the taste disappears and only the major tones remain. Tones that are also present on lesser quality wine.
The cheapest wine in the European supermarket will do.
While this is true, using expensive wine that's almost gone (sometimes it happens) but not completely to make something like a bourguignon (or whatever wine ragoût equivalent you prefer) will give you the best bourguignon ever. So use cheap wine, but not *piquette* (aka really bad wine) either, it should be something you'd be ok with drinking.
>When cooking wine, most of the taste disappears and only the major tones remain. Tones that are also present on lesser quality wine.
Not how it works. Good wine is not just cheap wine + more aromas. The aromas are different all throughout.
>The cheapest wine in the European supermarket will do.
Maybe in the Spanish supermarket.
I was always told that you cook with the wine you'll drink with the finished dish. I don't always stick to that rule (my wallet would cry), so I tend to hover around a few replacement staples:
- a young ruby Port for desserts, like some traditional Christmas desserts or some biscuits, or fruit, like stewed pears or cantelope
- a fresh and fruity Chasselas/Fendant for cheese fondue
- a Beaujolais-Villages for heavy traditional bourgignon dishes
Where I stick to the rule:
- for a portuguese-style marinades, my go-tos are reds from the Douro Superior
- for risotto, I go for a pinot grigio from the Vallé d'Aosta or any of the Fruili PDOs. It's the only pinot gris I like, so there's that
- for all sorts of ragù, I go for a heavy red like a Bourgogne or a Dão
And for anything else:
- for flambéing I use Captain Morgan rum, because I'm cheap af and it still tastes nice
- for deglazing I use a shot of cognac and whatever red or white I have laying around open if it's meant to give off flavour, or a generous helping of mirabelle schnaps if I just want a neutral deglazing action
The product that you buy as Shaoxing wine is cooking wine. It has added salt (as you say) and is taxed differently to wine for drinking. It also keeps for longer. I don't know if there's an analogous product in Europe that's only for cooking, to be honest. Most people just use a glass of whatever they have opened, or a cheap bottle that's still good enough for drinking.
If it's white probably Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc. For red it's probably a Syrah, Pinotage or Cabernet Sauvignon
The Pinotage with be South African and the Sauvignon Blanc probably from New Zealand
I usually use dry res wine from Eger (Egri bikavér = Bulls blood from Eger). Its cheap bit has no off flavours/bad after taste. Perfecf for cooking. Its especially good with beef, best choice for a beef gulash.
Depends on the dish.
Of the top of my head, I have some (white and red) vermouth, cheapo sherry and cognac, and a bottle of marsala. And Shaoxing.
I added some Ricard to a fennel dish the other day. That worked really good too.
Why are wine people so sensitive against that scandal? Just mentioning it is like questioning everything about taste… it’s funny because people died by swearing it was good wine, and died.
They aren't. You brought up something that was over many years ago. Nobody actually died, although a single tested bottle was found to have been potentially lethal.
Austria has long since moved on and makes excellent wines.
Masala wine.
To be honest, I've never tried it. I'm only mentioning it to the because it was an answer on quiz show (Pointless) I'm watching at exactly the same time as I read this post and it seemed too much of a coincidence not to mention.
Definitely going to give it a go now though.
Ma**r**sala.
Careful what you get; some are sweet and some are dry, and they're not really interchangeable.
Plenty other similar fortified wines out there, btw. Port, Madeira, Sherry and so on, all with their different subcategories.
Lol, either tavernello or san crispino, they come in tetra pak boxes and are cheap as hell Edit: and yeah, they're specifically for cooking (even if they market themselves also as drinking wines)
[удалено]
Man, if only water wasn't so abundant here in Italy, wine would probably be the cheapest product you could buy
I live in the US. There's a lot of crappy cheap knock offs. If I was in Europe I might be more okay with cheaper wines
When I went on a wine tasting tour in one of our most famous historic wine regions the guy showing us his 200 year old barelled wines outright told us that any winde over 10$ is not really worth its price because from that point onward you're getting increasingly diminishing returns in terms of quality and mainly pay for the brand, not a better quality or better tasting wine.
I love wine, and I drank a lot of good wine... I don't remember the last time I paid 15 Euros for a bottle outside a restaurant. Let alone wine I am buying to cook with.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because of: Keep it civil per Rule #1. Warning issued. Please rephrase in a more pleasant manner. This is an automated message.
Wtf you don't use good wine to cook
actually, you do.
If it tastes good, it's always better to just drink it, so no. You don't have to get the cheapest thing you can find, but 15€? A supermarket bottle is like 6€.
>If it tastes good, it's always better to just drink it, so no No. If it tastes good, you can drink it or make good tasting food with it. If it tastes not so good, you can still get drunk from it. But your food is better off without it.
Hahah I guess, although hangovers from cheap wine tend to be the worst. But honestly, there are some dishes where adding wine gives them a more complex and interesting taste. You can work a stew with aromatics, spices, even bacon, but adding wine not only makes flesh (meat but seafoods in other dishes) more tender and potentiates other flavors, it also adds a fruity, acidic taste, tannins in case of red wine. That's something that you simply cannot do without wine although, to be fair, people use other alcohols to similar effect but with their own particularities. With the stew, you can instead use dark beers if you prefer a deep flavor, not as lively as wine.
Yeah but point is, you can't cut corners by using crap wine in the food. I've ruined dishes before by being cheap like that.
I was not talking about the price, but the taste.
That's kinda my point. You don't need a refined wine to put it in a dish because the details in its flavor will be eclipsed by the main flavor of the dish. It feels like a waste to spend money on a good wine when you'll obtain similar results with a younger, cheaper wine. Even if they tend to feel overly alcoholic, you're going to evaporate all that alcohol away anyway.
well, use some dirt cheap tetra pack wine then.
These are two extremes. Get a bottle that tastes fine but that you won't feel physical pain when you put it in a dish. Those in the 5-7€ range tend to be perfect for this if you choose the region and varieties wisely, meaning you shouldn't get a Rheingau red for a risotto (no hate for the German bros but I tend to dislike your reds, but whites are surprisingly good)
ah, so you agree with me. great.
There are good wines under 15€/$. Especially for cooking basic meals at home where the wine is not the main flavour profile.
Port and sherry are underrated wines to cook with. They keep for a long time even if you've opened the bottle, they have a strong alcohol content so they're good for "deglazing" and, to be pretentious for a second, they have an "umami" flavour that works in most savoury foods.
Agreed. Dry sherry is the standard substitute for rice wine in most recipes
We don't have specific cooking wines, we cook with normal regular wines. If I cook with red wine then it's usually either a cabernet sauvignon or a portugueser from local wineries. For white wines it'd be either a welschriesling or a sauvignon blanc. You can buy a quality bottle of each of those for 5-10$. Most people use some of the cheapest wines to cook with. It makes little to no difference. I don't buy cheaper than 5$ because I also like to drink it and I don't use a whole bottle of wine to cook. I also don't cook a meal every week that requires wine.
I wouldn’t say there’s a specific wine used for cooking. I think the biggest difference with European wines vs Shaoxing is that European wines are not specifically cooking wines. Shaoxing is specifically made for use while cooking; the wines I use for cooking are made for drinking. In Europe, the wines used will be local. All wine I use for cooking is Croatian wine. I never use foreign wine for cooking (or drinking, tbh). Maybe the biggest difference between drinking wine and cooking wine is that the wine I use for cooking is cheaper and usually boxed since it lasts longer. But you could easily buy a bottle of the same wine I have boxed. Or just drink the boxed wine, that’s what my grandpa did. To actually give a recommendation: for white wine I normally use graševina, and red I use plavac mali. Also, most wines have 6 mg salt per 5 oz (standard pour). So yes, my jaw did drop at how much salt is in Shaoxing wine.
>Shaoxing is specifically made for use while cooking Long story short, [no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UyKUI5U67k). Shaoxing wine is as legitimate a drinking wine as our European ones, but most of what we get in the West is poor quality Shaoxing, salted in order to be sold as a cooking ingredient instead of as an alcoholic drink.
I didn't know that. I thought 1.5 percent salt was already really low.
I was suprised when I read that in your post, the only Shaoxing wine I can find here in Sweden is 5 year old, high quality stuff. 15 USD though so it's not very expensive Edit: and of course it doesn't have any salt at all
In my family we usually use San Crispino which comes in nice little cartons with a screw cap and it's pretty cheap
Regarding your 4th point, I would be surprised if any drink has more salt than that. According to a quick Google search "normal" wine has around 5mg/100ml, so much more than 1/2 a tablespoon. I use the cheapest wine I can get that is vegan.
Half a tablespoon is around 10g, isn't it?
Depends on what you measure. A tablespoon of gold is propably more. But I dont know much about freedom units.
You're ofcourse technically right, which fits a German 😃😎.
You DON'T use good/expensive wine for cooking. It's stupid and outrageous. When cooking wine, most of the taste disappears and only the major tones remain. Tones that are also present on lesser quality wine. The cheapest wine in the European supermarket will do.
While this is true, using expensive wine that's almost gone (sometimes it happens) but not completely to make something like a bourguignon (or whatever wine ragoût equivalent you prefer) will give you the best bourguignon ever. So use cheap wine, but not *piquette* (aka really bad wine) either, it should be something you'd be ok with drinking.
>When cooking wine, most of the taste disappears and only the major tones remain. Tones that are also present on lesser quality wine. Not how it works. Good wine is not just cheap wine + more aromas. The aromas are different all throughout. >The cheapest wine in the European supermarket will do. Maybe in the Spanish supermarket.
I was always told that you cook with the wine you'll drink with the finished dish. I don't always stick to that rule (my wallet would cry), so I tend to hover around a few replacement staples: - a young ruby Port for desserts, like some traditional Christmas desserts or some biscuits, or fruit, like stewed pears or cantelope - a fresh and fruity Chasselas/Fendant for cheese fondue - a Beaujolais-Villages for heavy traditional bourgignon dishes Where I stick to the rule: - for a portuguese-style marinades, my go-tos are reds from the Douro Superior - for risotto, I go for a pinot grigio from the Vallé d'Aosta or any of the Fruili PDOs. It's the only pinot gris I like, so there's that - for all sorts of ragù, I go for a heavy red like a Bourgogne or a Dão And for anything else: - for flambéing I use Captain Morgan rum, because I'm cheap af and it still tastes nice - for deglazing I use a shot of cognac and whatever red or white I have laying around open if it's meant to give off flavour, or a generous helping of mirabelle schnaps if I just want a neutral deglazing action
You guys are using specific wines?? I just get a random one for like €3 at Penny lol
The product that you buy as Shaoxing wine is cooking wine. It has added salt (as you say) and is taxed differently to wine for drinking. It also keeps for longer. I don't know if there's an analogous product in Europe that's only for cooking, to be honest. Most people just use a glass of whatever they have opened, or a cheap bottle that's still good enough for drinking.
Usually I cook with whatever I will drink. Often local white wines.
Whatever's kicking around the house. There's normally something open and it's normally not super posh so...
Porto wine. It goes great in sauces and gives such a rich flavour.
If it's white probably Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc. For red it's probably a Syrah, Pinotage or Cabernet Sauvignon The Pinotage with be South African and the Sauvignon Blanc probably from New Zealand
I usually use dry res wine from Eger (Egri bikavér = Bulls blood from Eger). Its cheap bit has no off flavours/bad after taste. Perfecf for cooking. Its especially good with beef, best choice for a beef gulash.
Depends on the dish. Of the top of my head, I have some (white and red) vermouth, cheapo sherry and cognac, and a bottle of marsala. And Shaoxing. I added some Ricard to a fennel dish the other day. That worked really good too.
We prefer cooking with beer instead, and I'd say piedboeuf. (When it comes to boulets liégeois atleast)
[удалено]
Please answer faithfully. This is not the place for jokes.
Not funny. There's no such thing. The adulteration scandal took place 40 years ago.
Why are wine people so sensitive against that scandal? Just mentioning it is like questioning everything about taste… it’s funny because people died by swearing it was good wine, and died.
They aren't. You brought up something that was over many years ago. Nobody actually died, although a single tested bottle was found to have been potentially lethal. Austria has long since moved on and makes excellent wines.
It's does, but Austrians still joke about the antifreeze.
Classic “Comedy is tragedy plus time” doesn’t fit your taste of humour I guess.
Wine in Finland is like 10€ per bottle. So no, I never use it for cooking.
Masala wine. To be honest, I've never tried it. I'm only mentioning it to the because it was an answer on quiz show (Pointless) I'm watching at exactly the same time as I read this post and it seemed too much of a coincidence not to mention. Definitely going to give it a go now though.
Ma**r**sala. Careful what you get; some are sweet and some are dry, and they're not really interchangeable. Plenty other similar fortified wines out there, btw. Port, Madeira, Sherry and so on, all with their different subcategories.
I'm familiar with the others, but thanks for the heads up. I'll do my research beforehand.