Wine in cooking

[hammerman]

I absolutely hate the taste of all wines but i love cooking with wine.....sauces, marinades or for longer dishes such as coq-au-vin etc.

But as i don't know what to use, i'm a bit flummoxed. Do i just by the cheapest vino-plonco in tesco or what ?. I've noticed Tesco sell small bottles of wine for a qid or so.

Any suggestions what i should use for cooking with ?

Ta muchly

[Buenchico]

All the TV chefs say "If it isn't good enough to drink, it isn't good enough to cook with", so they (and I) would not recommend necessarily looking for the very cheapest wines.

If you're cooking with red wine, look for something 'full-bodied'. I'd suggest looking for the word 'Shiraz' on the label. It's a grape which always provides plenty of fruity flavour and it's almost impossible to buy a poor quality Shiraz. (i.e. any bottle of Shiraz should be good enough to cook with will give great flavour to your food).

Alternatively, for a full-bodied red, forget about the grape and look out for the countries. Almost any red wine imported from Eastern Europe (particularly Hungary) tends to lean towards the 'full-bodied' end of the scale (and the quality is easily good enough to cook with). Much the same can be said for many of the cheaper red wines from Chile and Argentina.

When it comes to white wines, the best results are probably obtained by using fairly dry wines but still with some 'fruit' in the flavour. A good (cheap) grape to look for might be Sauvignon Blanc. Alternatively, just check that the wine is labelled 'dry'. Italy produces some of the best cheap dry white wines and the vast majority of Italian whites sold in this country are of a reasonable quality (and certainly good enough to cook with).

Chris

[vivandorron]

Good advice from Buenchico. Nevertheless, consider the following:-
Don't waste too good a wine in the cookpot. If the wine is cheap and is in a plastic bottle, but tastes alright; then it's O.K.to use for cooking. However, a liking of red wine does help matters, because it has been said that "a glass of wine in the cook is worth two in the sauce".