Wine is one of the most popular drinks in the world. It has become an important drink during ceremonies, events, rituals, and even fun sessions with friends.
But wines are more than drinks. There are some wines that are used in the preparation of delicious meals. These wines are called cooking wines.
Cooking wines or cooking sherry is economical. They are used as one of the main ingredients in cooking food. Cooking wines are synonymous with salt as a preservative, flavor enhancer, and food coloring.
A chemical reaction occurs when a bottle of cooking wine is opened. Exposed to oxygen, a fermentation process converts the alcohol in wine to acetic acid. This produces what is called wine vinegar after some time. The salt in cooking wine slows down this transformation by stopping the growth of microorganisms that produce acetic acid. Salt is very important as a bottle of cooking wine can be opened and used occasionally for a long period of time.
Some cooks find it convenient to cook wines. However, many professional chefs don’t use them or rarely use them. They believe that the added preservative in cooking wines lowers the quality of the food that is cooked with that wine.
If they have to use wine for cooking, these professional chefs prefer to use cheap but drinkable wine for cooking. In fact, cookbooks and cooking textbooks specify and recommend the use of drinkable wines. These chefs believe that the use of wines for cooking is not an excuse as there are good quality drinkable wines available for cooking.
By itself, cooking wine is not unappetizing and of very poor quality. There is even a school of thought that discourages cooks from staying away from any wine that is unacceptable to drink.
In the US and Europe, cooking wines are made from grapes. Rice wines are used in Chinese or East Asian cuisine. As the name implies, rice wines are made by fermenting starch that has been converted into sugars. The fermentation process for rice wine is similar to that for beer production.
Cooking wines produced by fermentation of rice starch have a higher alcohol content than grape wines. Unlike pure cooking wines, rice wines can be drunk and used as an ingredient in cooking food.
Popular examples of cooking wines produced from rice are sake from Japan, Mijiu from China, Cheongju from Korea, Rorou from Vietnam, Sonti from India, and Sato from Thailand.
If you want to include a splash of cooking wine in your dishes, it is best to use a rice wine.
