I hate waste, but I also don’t feel the need to finish a bottle of wine if it feels like an absolute struggle to get through. What dishes have you cooked with wine you felt was not great to drink? My advice for cooking wine is don’t cook with anything you won’t drink… so this does go against my own philosophy, but looking for some creative ideas from all the master chefs here.
Of course the idea of sangria came to mind, but in this cold weather I’m not feeling this idea too much and there is an option of making a red into a mulled wine. I’ve done pasta dishes, but currently fermenting a dough I intend on making into focaccia that has a 1/4 bottle of grand cru champagne I thought was pretty awful. I was able to do this by mixing one dough with a very active poolish. A different thought on this process would be to cook down the champagne to 1) reduce the overall volume and increase flavor 2) cook some of the alcohol out.
I disagree somewhat with the idea that you shouldn’t cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink. It’s one thing if the wine has a major flaw such as being corked, excessive VA, mouse, etc. In that case the only answer probably is to pour it down the drain. However, if it’s just a wine that doesn’t fit your preferences that’s a different story. For example I wouldn’t drink Caymus, Belle Glos, or the like but if I had some on hand for some reason I would use them without hesitation in a hearty stew or chili, and probably even in pan sauces.
I guess it would be an interesting A/B test to cook half of a dish with a jam monster and half with something like a modest village burgundy and see if anyone could tell the difference.
Mark - a friend and I did this experiment with Daniel Boulud’s short rib recipe, which starts with reducing 3 bottles of wine. We used all the same ingredients and cooked in the same kitchen with the same equipment and technique, save for one of us used inexpensive syrah I no longer wanted, and the other a quite nice ripe vintage burgundy villages. By the time all was said and done, while the dishes didn’t taste exactly the same, neither was noticeably superior to the other. Both were delicious.
I keep a few bottles on the back counter, at room temperature, and anything we didn’t like or didn’t finish goes into that zone. Then, when I am cooking, in it goes.
If we are cooking with tomato sauce, mixing in oils/fats, or making a reduction…the wine is not gonna end up being what we put in. I’ve never felt this has failed me.
Most of the time, it goes into the vinegar pot. We will keep an open bottle of something we don’t like in the refrigerator for 3-5 days just in case its needed for a sauce or braise but after 5 days, its becoming vinegar.
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