Cooking with wine is quite different from eating with wine.

Many times when people think about cooking with wine, what is actually going through their mind is enjoying a glass of wine with a meal that they are having. Although there is a lot to be said for choosing the proper wine to go with what you are eating, what we are talking about is actually using the wine in the recipe itself.

If you have never tried it before, you would be surprised at exactly what you can add to a meal whenever you use wine when you cook. In fact, just how much it helps the flavor of a meal may take you by surprise.

The Gourmet's Guide to Cooking with Wine“Who knew that wine could be the ultimate convenience ingredient, adding big impact to recipes and simple dishes?” asks Alison Boteler in her new book, The Gourmet’s Guide to Cooking with Wine: How To Use Wine To Take Simple Recipes from Ordinary to Extraordinary. By the way, this book would make a terrific gift for any foodie you know. Hint! Hint!

Whenever you are cooking with wine, several different things are going to happen. First of all, the alcohol that is in the wine is going to quickly evaporate so you do not need to be concerned about giving the food to your family or those who are too young to drink. Instead of adding alcohol to the meal, it adds a lot of flavor because the taste of the wine is actually concentrated to a certain extent. Although you can choose any wine to cook with, you should make sure that you look beyond the basic choices of red or white.

Typically, you would want to start out with a basic red cooking wine as this is the easiest to use. You can really add it to almost anything that you are cooking in order to give it additional flavor. As you continue to use wine when you are cooking, you may want to do a little bit of experimentation with things such as white wines and also cooking sherry. Sherry is actually just a wine that is fortified with spirits in order to help preserve the taste of the wine, even after it is opened.

Extra Benefit: It’s Good for Your Health

You might also be wondering about the health benefits of cooking with wine. There is a chemical that is found in the skin of grapes called resveratrol. Many people enjoy drinking red wine in order to get the health benefits that comes from this particular chemical. It is said to not only help with cancer, it may also help those with heart disease. Fortunately, resveratrol is not hurt with the cooking process but if you leave wine open for a long period of time, it may lose some of its potency.

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