Hi all,
I recently came across a recipe that I wish to try for a lentil bolognese. I’m excited to try it as I’ve been trying to find a recipe I can use my red lentils with, but I’m curious about one thing both with this recipe, and recipes in general.
This recipe calls for the pan to be deglazed with red wine. This is something I’ve seen before in other recipes, though this recipe is the first of which I’m taking an interest in exploring. I’m personally fine with regular red wine, but my concern is that I have a friend who is incredibly cautious with alcohol, and says she’d refuse to eat things if they had alcoholic ingredients.
Putting aside my personal thoughts about that, I was curious if using a non-alcoholic wine would work just as well, or if the alcohol adds certain properties to the wine that make it function better as an ingredient or for deglazing. I’m mainly curious as I hope to invite friends over for dinner in the future, and want to make accommodations where possible, especially if it’s as easy as simply buying a slightly different ingredient.
Thanks in advance!
You lose as much alcohol as you do water, as they’re chemically bound together.
Alcohol doesn’t really cook out of a dish.
That’s not true, otherwise distillation would be impossible. You lose some water along with the alcohol but not the same percentage of both.
Distillation isn’t the same thing, because of controlled temps and the condensing process is a significant part of the separation.
For food you don’t really cook out the alcohol.
Chemist cooks have tested this. The alcohol cooks out at very close to the same rate as water.
That’s not true at all. Alcohol is only azeotropic at much higher concentrations than is present in wine. Alcohol boils at a significantly lower temperature than water and you will lose more alcohol than water.
No, you don’t.
They’re chemically bound and evaporate together in food.
I don’t have a link to it, but about a decade ago a chemist cook did some testing and demonstrated you lose alcohol at the same rate as the water (or so close as to not be able to see a difference).
In the end, alcohol doesn’t “cook out” to any significant degree.