The first time my boyfriend ever cooked a meal for me at his place, it was a pork chop recipe out of a cookbook that included (in my younger mind) such fancy things as white wine and shallots. I was skeptical at first, if only because my experiences were with my mother's pork chops that always somehow turned gray, but trying it was among the best experiences and easily one of the reasons why I fell in love with him. One of the lovely things about it was the fact we'd get to have the white wine made to cook it as a drink at dinner as naturally the wine pairs well with itself and let's be honest, wine on a dinner date does add to the romance a bit. So how do we take advantage of this ingredient that most of us have hanging around somewhere (unless you don't drink, which is fine!) in our cooking? Here are a few of the ways you can use alcohols of all kinds to mix up your cooking.
One of the main things alcohol does is enhance the flavor of whatever it is being cooked with, especially meats. The trick is though, unlike what most people will tell you, alcohol in alcoholic beverages does not always cook down very well. In order to have that happen, you need to be certain of two things: is it hot enough and is it exposed to the air? Outside of the pork chops, my favorite meat/alcohol pairing is bratwurst and beer. I tend to go for a stout as those have more flavor to them so it gets fried into the bratwurst. As you can tell from the two examples: when you are cooking with meat pair light meats (chicken, fish) with light colored alcohols (wine, gin, etc) and dark meats (beef, brats) with dark colored alcohols (stout, whiskey). Though for me, this is not a hard and fast rule, as I recently used a cherry wine for the pork chops the last time I made them as we did not have any white wine.
Another trick you can use it with deals with how its boiling and freezing points work. See, when alcohol and water mix, they develop this inseparable relationship where it's almost like they are a completely different solution. This is called an azeotrope and we can use this to our advantage in a variety of ways. One method is using it to help keep a sorbet or any other frozen dish to keep from completely freezing over. As alcohol has a lower freezing point than water, when the two combine in say a frozen dessert, it's less likely to turn into a complete inedible iceberg when you pull it out of the freezer. It also has a lower boiling point than water, so if you wish to have a poached dish use less water in it so you can have more flavor, this would be a great way to reduce water but still allow the food to cook properly.
A few others tips when it comes to alcohol and cooking would be do not use your best wine for cooking! Go with something low to mid range in terms of quality, you will be able to taste the wine sure, but it will not dominate the dish so save those high quality wines for drinking (and the lowest for sangria!). Also if you need to chill a bottle of wine in a hurry, best to wrap a damp towel around the bottle and stick it in the freezer. This will chill it in half the time but you will need to thaw the towel off as it will be frozen to the bottle at that point. Finally, do you guys have any favorite alcohols to cook with? I love cooking with stouts and any sort of flavorful wine, same with sake. Let me know down below if you got any favorites to share.