Here’s the thing. I know nothing – squat nada – about wine. I don’t know how to choose it. I don’t drink it.
I can tell red from white. And I know leftover wine can be frozen. That’s it.
I lived in a dry town for almost 20 years, so I’ve got a good excuse for my ignorance. That, and I grew up in a Baptist church.
But I do like to cook with wine. Every time I buy a bottle, I get confused by all the choices. Last time, I was tempted to buy the gallon of red wine, just so I wouldn’t need to buy again for a while.
If you’ve got wine buying tips for me, I’d love for you to share them. Feel free to link up any informative post you may have or leave your thoughts in the comments.
Here are a few of the recipes I have that use wine:
- Roast Chicken with Garlic and Wine
- Onions with Herbs and Wine
- Pan Fried Steak and Steak Burgers with Red Wine Onions
- Velma’s Chili
Now it’s your turn. Link up any recipe that uses wine or any post about choosing wine. Feel free to link as many as you like. Be sure to link back to Eat at Home in your blog post. You can use the button below, if you like.
‘);
// ]]>
I, too, grew up Baptist and don’t know squat about wine either. HATED IT. It’s so sour! This summer I went to a concert at a winery and actually had a wine that I liked. I even went back later and bought another bottle. So I can finally say, at 43, that I found a wine that I liked.
I am right there with you, Tiffany. I grew up and am still Baptist. I also never really liked wine, or beer either, for that matter. I have started to cook with wine a little and do have a bottle of both red and white in my fridge. This is partly from reading you blog and finding out that I could freeze the wine. I did try a new recipe recently for a beef roast cooked in red wine and beef broth. I used Greek seasonings on the roast, thus Greek Roast Beef. I was please with the result. It made a very flavorful gravy, and I will be cooking beef roast that way again. Thanks for hosting and have a great week.
I’ve never successfully cooked with wine. I don’t mind to drink a glass here and there–but something about having that flavor in my food just doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe it’s just the recipes I’ve used?
Phoebe, my mom always says she doesn’t like the taste of wine in food either. But at Christmas I made a pork tenderloin and poured white wine over it, along with other seasonings and she loved it. So maybe it just depends on the recipe?
There are 2 secrets to cooking with wine: Secret #1 -use a “drinking wine”, not a “cooking wine”. Cooking wines taste awful, so the awful taste will be in your food. Yuck!
Secret # 2: use the correct wine for the recipe you’re preparing. If the recipe calls for a red wine, don’t use a white, or vise versa. Even if you don’t drink wine, with a little bit of Google research you can become familiar with enough wines to make an educated choice. Case in point: the white wine shown in the picture of ingredients for Roast Chicken with Garlic and Wine is a Moscato. This wine is very sweet and kind of fizzy. It’s delicious for drinking, but it wouldn’t be a good choice for this kind of recipe. Hope this helps.
The only advise I can give you, our gas station has a wine rack in the station, every Friday they have wine tasting and they have people who really know wine, so if I want something I go on Friday night and as their advise and they are very knowledgable and very nice and don’t necessarily steer you to expensive wines.
Wow! That’s some kind of gas station!
Ok, first, DO NOT buy a gallon of wine, unless you plan to cook with it several times a week. It’ll be vinegar before you use it all. (Hmmm…could be another post all together, huh?)
Being 100% Italian, I gotta tell ya, I’m a complete disgrace to my family. I HATE wine!! I enjoy it in certain dishes, though, like chicken marsala. I really don’t know much about it, other than red should be room temperature, white should be cold. That’s the extent of my wine knowledge. 🙂