Hi all,
I recently came across a recipe that I wish to try for a lentil bolognese. I’m excited to try it as I’ve been trying to find a recipe I can use my red lentils with, but I’m curious about one thing both with this recipe, and recipes in general.
This recipe calls for the pan to be deglazed with red wine. This is something I’ve seen before in other recipes, though this recipe is the first of which I’m taking an interest in exploring. I’m personally fine with regular red wine, but my concern is that I have a friend who is incredibly cautious with alcohol, and says she’d refuse to eat things if they had alcoholic ingredients.
Putting aside my personal thoughts about that, I was curious if using a non-alcoholic wine would work just as well, or if the alcohol adds certain properties to the wine that make it function better as an ingredient or for deglazing. I’m mainly curious as I hope to invite friends over for dinner in the future, and want to make accommodations where possible, especially if it’s as easy as simply buying a slightly different ingredient.
Thanks in advance!
You can use a vinegar to deglaze. That will give it a bunch of flavor and doesn’t contain alcohol. I would try out a balsamic or red wine vinegar to complement the bolognese.
Definitely don’t do a 1:1 replacement, though, that will be far too sour! I would say start with a tablespoon or so and replace the rest of the liquid with water or stock, then scale up if you want more punch.
I have sometimes replaced white wine for mushroom risotto with apple-cider vinegar, water and sugar mixture.
I personally don’t cut the balsamic I use because I like the flavor in sauces. But I don’t use a cup of it or anything like that. A few splashes of vinegar will deglaze your pan just fine. I would say maybe 1/4 of a cup or less if I were eyeballing it.
You probably have a very good balsamic, something probably not in most grocery stores.
I think most people don’t realize that a great balsamic isn’t the acidic, tart, watery stuff, but something more viscous and damn delicious all on its own (though acidic ones have their place in cooking, like sauerbraten).
I have a few, one that’s just for salad or as a finish, others I’d use while cooking.
Given the food restrictions, you’re probably better off using water, or maybe mostly water and a splash of white vinegar (to get the acidic kick the wine would add.)
Keep in mind, non-alcoholic wine is going to be nasty. While it doesn’t need to be spectacular wine… you don’t want to use stuff that you would not willingly drink. Cheap wine in particular usually ends up getting reduced and the “cheapness” just gets magnified.
Eh, for a given value of “works”, it works fine.
The non alcoholic wines suck though. I don’t even like most reds, and I’d still rather suck down boxed cabernet than drink the non alcoholic stuff. It just tastes meh at best.
There’s a general rule that you don’t cook with wine you wouldn’t drink. While it isn’t some kind of rigorous standard where only the finest possible wines are worthy of cooking with, it does mean that if something is decent out of the container, it isn’t going to get better once it’s concentrated.
So, if you want to try it, try a sip of the stuff straight. If it’s palatable, you’re good to go. There’s very few things that require the alcohol to give the desired results, it’s only mandatory when you’re extracting compounds out of food that can’t be brought out because they aren’t soluble in fat or water. Otherwise, by the time you dilute the alcohol even in something like bourbon across an entire dish, and cook some of the ethanol out, the amount left isn’t going to be detectable in the flavor it’s the other things in wines, liquors, and beers that we use them for.
For deglazing, the alcohol itself does nothing they you’ll be able to taste at the end. Even the kind of “super tasters” that test things for corporations have trouble detecting the residual ethanol, when they can at all. And there aren’t any substances in a fond that aren’t water or fat soluble, so it isn’t useful that way.
IMO, you’d be better off skipping the idea of adding grape juice at all. It just isn’t going to do anything worth mentioning. Any stock is going to be better than that. You’re adding more sugar, and that’s going to shift the taste more than deglazing with plain water would. Not necessarily in a bad way, particularly if you then reduce the liquid and let the sugars develop a little, but it’s still further away from the taste of red wine as a deglazing liquid than water is.
Obviously, taste is subjective, so YMMV, but I’ve dicked around with substitutions over the years for recovering alcoholics, and religious folks. Nobody misses the actual wine unless the entire dish is wine centric in the first place (like beef bourguignon). Most people, if they do notice difference from a version that uses wine will think it’s just the variety of wine changing. If they’re never had the wine version in the first place, it won’t matter at all.
Thank you so much for such a detailed response! It was very informative.
TIL: People who are using wine as an ingredient in a meal, really think they have to use the expensive ones as well. For years we are using just the cheapest bottled wine available. If you think about it, you could also just use balsamic vinegar or something similar for a white wine to add the acidyness/taste. The alcohol does evaporate anyway. But these things are mostly subjective anyway.
Good wine doesn’t need to be expensive, but I’ve learned you shouldn’t use wine for cooking if you wouldn’t drink it either
It should, yes.
Also, while this is unlikely to appease your friend if you properly heat the wine during deglazing you’ll cook off any alcohol. I see non-alcoholic cooking wines as being more useful to alcoholics that don’t trust themselves having any booze in the house (though in that case I’d honestly suggest completely avoiding any taste of wine).
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You lose as much alcohol as you do water, as they’re chemically bound together.
Alcohol doesn’t really cook out of a dish.
That’s not true at all. Alcohol is only azeotropic at much higher concentrations than is present in wine. Alcohol boils at a significantly lower temperature than water and you will lose more alcohol than water.
That’s not true, otherwise distillation would be impossible. You lose some water along with the alcohol but not the same percentage of both.
I’m calling bullshit, I never ever felt any of the effects of alcohol from eating anything cooked with it or as an additive. Secondly by adding energy in the form of heat you are breaking those hydrogen bonds which are mixing and rebonding with carbon and whatever else you cooking.
I’m not disagreeing with the overall idea of your statement, but you likely won’t feel the effects of alcohol in food no matter what (jello shots would be an exception, possibly other foods absolutely drenched in alcohol). The amount added to food is so low to begin with your body will process it before you start to feel it, it works more as a flavor and fragrance enhancer.
But you’re correct, water and alcohol don’t evaporate at the same rate in cooking, you’d have to do some calculations that I’m not about to spend my time doing, to determine by how much. It ain’t 1:1, but it also isn’t 100:1.
Agreed. It’s like worrying you’ll fail a drug test because you walked by someone on the street and smelled weed.
Well you wouldn’t, because it’s so diluted. Imagine you’re deglazing with half a cup, and half of that boils away. That leaves you with 60ml of 15% ABV which is 8 grams of alcohol. If this meal serves 4, the alcohol consumed by each person is 2g.
Compare this to a single shot of vodka, which contains 17.5g of pure alcohol. You would have to eat 9 portions to consume the equivalent of 1 shot, and if you do that, you probably won’t be invited back.
Lol which do you think would have a higher percentage of increasing your b.a.c.? Eating one reasonable portion of vodka sauce pasta, or 5 minutes gargling with alcohol based mouthwash?
I’d rather gargle the pasta sauce
I have nicknamed you “the gargler”
I think you can actually deglaze with any liquid if you want to: even water. Wine is often used for the flavour, and I guess in some dishes the alcohol can affect the other ingredients too.
That said, I imagine lentils would turn out just as good with non-alcoholic wine, so no worries there.
I’m sure you know your friend better than I do, but as a general rule if someone says they won’t eat food with any amount of alcohol in it, it’s good to respect that choice. Some people have allergies or intolerances, or the flavour might cause an alcoholic distress, and that’s before you get into people’s religious, philosophical, or dietary beliefs about alcohol.
Honestly, that’s kind of true for any ingredient, but alcohol tends to be one that people push people on and it can be really triggering for some people.
I can confirm you can glaze perfectly fine with water. I don’t usually use water, but have done it with a little splash on occasion.
Let me do some maths for a typical situation:
- 125ml of wine (half cup)
- 2l of broth
- 12% alcohol wine
- cooking it for 1h at 78°C (so 25% of the alcohol remains)
The final alcohol content of the dish should be (125ml/2l)*(12%)*(0.25) ≃ 0.2%. For reference an over-ripen banana has twice as much alcohol as that.
Is that such a big deal for your friend? (Don’t assume, ask her.) If it is not, just use wine.
That said if it’s a big deal for her, I wouldn’t recommend non-alcoholic wine. It’s typically awful. Instead use good quality vinegar, as others suggested.
For the record, if the friend is concerned about relapsing, the mere taste might be enough to trigger cravings. We can argue about how many people can taste it or not. It’s a risk the friend is unwilling to take and that should be respected.
And if it’s a religious restriction… it just gets weirder. It should still be respected…. Even if things seem odd.
Generally when people say “no food cooked with Alcohol”, they mean it; even if they’re okay with foods that have some alcohol in them in trace amounts.
Wait I can get drunk on bananas? I knew they were radioactive or something but damn!! Well… In both cases one would probably die of banana over consumption before even starting to feel the symptoms of the radioactivity or alcohol contents but still
Even if the banana is overripe (0.4% alcohol) it has ~1/10 the alcohol content of the same weight in your typical beer (4~5%).
So… technically yes, but in practice no.
For deglazing? Most liquids you would cook with should work. It is less about the liquid itself (barring corner cases) and more about the act of adding liquid loosening up the cooked on bits. You just choose a flavorful liquid so that you can turn that into a sauce.
In this case? Red wine vinegar is probably what you want. That said, you can almost never go wrong with replacing deglazing liquids with some chicken stock. Or… most cooking liquids for that matter. Chicken stock is magic. Dashi fulfills a similar role in Japanese cooking.
But if you are particularly concerned, post the recipe and folk can chime in.
Water works OK, but doesn’t dissolve fat soluble flavor compounds the way alcohol can. If the sauce contains some oil, it may work to deglaze with water and hope the oil soluble bits dissolve into the sauce later.
I wouldn’t use non-alc wine, it invariably tastes like shit.
I would use chicken stock, veg stock, a thin tomato juice.
I’ve never deglazed with grape juice, but it might be an interesting experiment. Or perhaps you can deglaze with chicken stock and then add the grape juice for its flavour profile. It would be hella sweet and tangy and not much like red wine, but as long as it tastes good, that’s all that matters
Vinegar would work But for deglazing, I’d agree with stock or something
Non-alcoholic wines exist and would work just as well for deglazing but probably won’t be as good on the flavor front. Most people would say that the alcohol evaporates out during cooking because it has a lower gas temp than water. Here is a study on that statement.
I say don’t use NA wine, as it’s usually pretty low quality and might negatively affect the flavor. Use a good vinegar and water. My sister who is sober does a 3:1 water to vinegar ratio.
So if the recipe calls for a cup of red wine to de-glaze, use 1/4 cup red wine vinegar mixed with 3/4 cup water(or stock for even more flavor). I’ve tried several of these recipes and it’s basically imperceptible.
Maybe just some watered down white or red grape juice (whichever wine the recipe calfs for)?
Ethyl alcohol does dissolve some chemicals that water and oils don’t. However, it is generally considered acceptable enough to use water or soup stock if wine is not acceptable.
Generally consider what an ingredient is bringing to a dish when considering alternatives.
Deglazing is simply using a liquid to remove fond from the pan, any liquid will do.
Wine brings a few flavours to a dish, primarily sour and umami. Add a bit of vinegar or other acid for the sour. Tomato paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, and stock will all add umami, but you may have to be careful about the amounts to avoid other flavours you may not like (I’ll sometimes mix small amounts of multiple umami boosters to avoid a specific flavour from standing out).
The main thing you won’t be able to replicate is the aromas carried by the alcohol.
