There were a lot of contributing factors to the color I think, even for me it’s not normally so pretty looking. I used a white wine so I don’t think that contributed. I cooked with a mix of shallots (which were a deeper color than they usually are for me) plus some red onion, normally I’d use yellow or white onion, so I think this had a major effect. All the vegetables were also super fresh and had intense color and aroma even before cooking, so a lot of that pigment definitely got into the dish. I also added a bit of mushroom sauce to it for umami which was a very dark brown, nearly black, and probably has some food dyes in it (I’ll have to check the ingredients). And then probably part of it too was that I used a bunch of tomato paste which got even further reduced down and the colors inteneified by how long I cooked it down for since I had to reduce 400 mL of wine down to probably 100mL of finished sauce at the end. So all the red color of the tomato paste got even more concentrated.
edit to add: Contrary to typical advice I used a somewhat sweet white wine (was some sort of blend as my store doesn’t sell a lot of vegan wines :/), so perhaps some of the color was intensified by the glaze effect from the concentrated sugars in the wine after cooking down. The lights in my kitchen are very warm and dim and I’m sure that also has an effect on how it looks.
Wow, thanks for the very thorough reply! And given those ingredients I bet it was incredibly good!
The mushroom sauce and red onions/shallots are probably the main culprits I would guess.
The wine also does give a beautiful glaze, I use Mirin a lot in my Asian-inspired dishes and it really elevates the final look of the dish.
Thank you!
There were a lot of contributing factors to the color I think, even for me it’s not normally so pretty looking. I used a white wine so I don’t think that contributed. I cooked with a mix of shallots (which were a deeper color than they usually are for me) plus some red onion, normally I’d use yellow or white onion, so I think this had a major effect. All the vegetables were also super fresh and had intense color and aroma even before cooking, so a lot of that pigment definitely got into the dish. I also added a bit of mushroom sauce to it for umami which was a very dark brown, nearly black, and probably has some food dyes in it (I’ll have to check the ingredients). And then probably part of it too was that I used a bunch of tomato paste which got even further reduced down and the colors inteneified by how long I cooked it down for since I had to reduce 400 mL of wine down to probably 100mL of finished sauce at the end. So all the red color of the tomato paste got even more concentrated.
edit to add: Contrary to typical advice I used a somewhat sweet white wine (was some sort of blend as my store doesn’t sell a lot of vegan wines :/), so perhaps some of the color was intensified by the glaze effect from the concentrated sugars in the wine after cooking down. The lights in my kitchen are very warm and dim and I’m sure that also has an effect on how it looks.
Wow, thanks for the very thorough reply! And given those ingredients I bet it was incredibly good!
The mushroom sauce and red onions/shallots are probably the main culprits I would guess. The wine also does give a beautiful glaze, I use Mirin a lot in my Asian-inspired dishes and it really elevates the final look of the dish.