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 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.
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.
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).
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, otherwise distillation would be impossible. You lose some water along with the alcohol but not the same percentage of both.
Distillation isn’t the same thing, because of controlled temps and the condensing process is a significant part of the separation.
For food you don’t really cook out the alcohol.
Chemist cooks have tested this. The alcohol cooks out at very close to the same rate as water.
No, you don’t.
They’re chemically bound and evaporate together in food.
I don’t have a link to it, but about a decade ago a chemist cook did some testing and demonstrated you lose alcohol at the same rate as the water (or so close as to not be able to see a difference).
In the end, alcohol doesn’t “cook out” to any significant degree.
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.
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.
