Different alcoholic beverages have long been used in cooking. Especially popular recipes with wine in countries with traditions of winemaking. Adding wine not only gives the dish a delicious flavor, but also enriches the taste, and often - changes the consistency and faster cooking foods.

The right choice of wine

As a rule, there is no need to use for cooking expensive vintage wines - suitable and cheaper varieties. The main thing that the wine was a natural and fragrant. The earlier is added to wine in the dish, the lower the requirements for its quality. So, for marinating kebabs can use the cheapest wine, but to add to the jelly or impregnation desserts desirable to choose the noble varieties of wine with a pronounced aroma.

There are proven for centuries the tradition of combining food and drinks. For example, red wine usually served with meat, and the fatter the meat, the more strong and the wine is to be preferred. For fish and seafood are more suitable for white wines. Suit white wines and dishes from white meat poultry. When cooking should be guided by the same rules in the red meat dishes to add the red wine, fish dishes - white, suitable for desserts sweet wines. As an accompaniment to dishes prepared with wine, served the same drink.

Fortified wines made in small quantities to add to soups, used for cooking beef Beef - Meat Guide   and sauces. Dry white wines are added to the cream and cheese sauces, they are combined with fish, seafood, poultry, at least - with beef and pork Pork - meat guide . An interesting take on the taste of vegetables cooked with white wine. A dish with eggs well suited white and rose wines. Fragrant sweet wines are perfectly combined with fruit and creamy desserts. The chocolate desserts add the wine is not accepted - bright flavor cocoa scores a faint smell of wine. For dessert of chocolate is more suitable strong scented alcohol - for example, brandy, rum, various liqueurs.

Secrets of the use of wine

How can I use wine in cooking? Typically, a noble drink made marinades, use it as the basis of food (such as meat stewed in wine) or flavored wine is almost ready dish.

The high acid content of wine makes an excellent base for marinades. Acids and alcohols soften the meat and reduce the cooking time. Marinating time depends primarily on the what kind of product is used. So, tough meat, especially game, can marinate overnight in the wine and enough fish for twenty minutes. To prepare the marinade in wine room temperature should add salt, pepper and other spices to taste.

On the basis of the wines are delicious and original sauces. The most simple - pour some wine into the pan in which the meat was roasting, add salt and spices and boil. Mixed with meat juice wine will lose its strength and will become a rich, full-bodied taste. It will be a good addition to steaks and splints. To thicken a sauce, it can add a little flour or starch. For this small amount of sauce is cooled in a cup and carefully to avoid lumps, mixed with flour. After this flour mixture is added to the sauce and brought to a boil while stirring.

For the preparation of fish sauce in the pan after frying fish poured wine, boil down to half its volume and mixed with heavy cream. Since the acid contained in wine, helps the protein to fold in cream, cream sauce with wine turns thick and tender. You can do it even easier by mixing a concentrated fish stock, white wine and cream cheese - sauce with a delicate taste is very well suited to the boiled and stewed fish.

Soups with wine has its own characteristics. Thus, the wine is very well suited to cheese soups, as it reduces the temperature of melting cheese. But root vegetables, cooked in wine, gets hard due to the wine acids. Therefore, these soups is better to add the wine at the end of cooking, when the potatoes, carrots and other vegetables already cooked.

When the meat is stewed in wine, it is best to add a drink at the beginning of cooking. In this case, the meat soaked flavor and cooked quickly digested and the taste of wine will become more dense.

Aromatic wine, and ennoble the most simple dessert. So, fresh fruit or berries with sugar and the young sparkling wine - one of the most popular desserts in the countries where the development of winemaking. In the preparation of such foods it takes only a few minutes. A little more time is needed in order to cook dried fruit in the wine. For example, very good figs, cooked in red wine with honey The benefits of honey: tasty recovery . After readiness of fruit wine syrup is boiled and poured them the finished dish. Usually used for desserts sweet and semi-sweet wines. A small amount of this wine will also give a special elegance fruit jelly or mousse.

The wine is added to pastries relatively rare. But wine syrups are well suited to wet biscuits, rum women, impregnating finished cakes.

Adding wine to the dish should not be guided by the principle of "the more, the better." As a rule, to flavor soups just two tablespoons of wine per serving to prepare portions of sauce is enough for one tablespoon, to extinguish a kilogram of meat should take half a glass of wine, and to extinguish the fish - half cup per liter of broth. It's recommendations are not binding, each cook adds a wine, in accordance with its own flavor.

Since wine by freezing not lose its properties, the remains of the drink can be poured into molds for ice and store in the freezer, if necessary, adding ice cubes to marinades, soups, sauces, fries or dessert.

Maria Bykov