Why You Shouldn't Use Cooking Wine And Just Opt For The Real Deal

Food is one of life's greatest joys, and to get the best flavors, we often opt for the finest ingredients to enhance the dishes we cook. So when a recipe calls for wine, why should your standards be any different? Cooking wine is packed with salt and other preservatives to keep it shelf-stable for up to a year. That sounds convenient for those who don't drink often, but it can leave food unnecessarily sweet or overly salty instead of adding the deep richness or brightness you're going for. You can adjust for the saltiness of cooking wine, but that may take trial and error with every dish and brand of cooking wine. 

Most cooks will have more success by purchasing a quality bottle of drinking wine that pairs well with the dish they plan to serve. You can sip the leftover wine while you eat, and the flavor is guaranteed to complement your meal. Cooking with a wine you would drink gives you much more control over the final flavor of your dish. 

Wine is a flavorful way to deglaze a pan or whip up a luscious reduction sauce. A sweet riesling adds a delicate sweetness to fresh mussels, while a heavy red is the best type of wine for a flavorful beef bourguignon. But it doesn't have to be that pricey. Run-of-the-mill cooking wine starts at around $4 for 13 ounces. Sounds cheap. But the same retailer (Walmart) carries a decent name brand (Kendall-Jackson) for only around $12 for 750 milliliters (roughly 25 ounces). That's less than 20 cents more per ounce.

If you enjoy cooking with wine but not drinking the rest of the bottle, there are alternatives to the salty, saccharine-sweet, often metallic-flavored cooking wine that stays stable in the pantry. You can also purchase a multipack of smaller bottles so you only have to open one at a time. On Amazon, a four-pack of Sutter Home chardonnay mini-bottles is actually cheaper per ounce than the cooking wine at Walmart. And unopened, it can stay good for one to three years (white wine) and as much as 10 (red wine) when properly stored. That's on par with cooking wine, which can last three to five years properly stored thanks to the preservatives. And with the right helpful tips to save you money on wine, you can outfit your pantry with what you need to have cooking wine on hand whenever the mood strikes.