Wine, Vinegar, and Food

They will tell you that you should neither cook with wine you wouldn't drink nor make vinegar with wine you wouldn't drink. I had my wine snob days, but location and finances have taken away the luxury of being a wine snob. Now I buy wine based on alcohol content (I need it to be low) and whether or not it has a screw cap or cork. I need it to have a screw cap. I don't drink anymore but I still buy wine for vinegar, sauces, and stock. The Livingston Cellars white to the left has an 11.5% alcohol content and the red has 9.5%. These are ideal for making vinegar. I could buy Earnest & Julio Gallo wine in gallon jugs for around $9 but the wine snob in me still lingers and I can't quite bring myself to do it. I won't even look at the boxed wine. Yeah, guess I'm not entirely wine tolerant yet.


In a perfect world, I'd buy much better wines than these $6/1.5 liter bottles. However, these wines Make Excellent Vinegar and they do a great job in my stocks. Their screw caps are a must because, since I don't drink wine, these sit in the fridge for extended periods of time. Also, with the screw top bottles, I can save the bottles and use them for vinegar storage later on down the road. Pasteurized vinegar will keep for a LONG time.


Don't let wine snobs make you feel bad for using cheap wine in your cooking (or in your drinking, for that matter). It still beats using water and it's still going to give you better flavor than you'd have otherwise. Speaking of which, if you cook soups and stocks in a pressure cooker, you may have noticed that they tend to come out kind of flat, a cup or two of wine in your pressure cooked soup/stock (after it's done) will really liven it up. Just bring it to a boil for a few minutes if you need to remove the alcohol. I don't use the pressure cooker anymore to make stock, I don't like what it does to it, but sometimes I end up with broth in the pressure cooker that I don't want to throw out and that's when this tip comes in handy. But back to your wine snob friends, if they just can't stand your use of cheap wine, then give them some empty bottles to save their wine leavings in for you.

While I was writing this post I found This Other Use for Empty Wine Bottles that really made me laugh. Talk about cheap!