Q: I’m unable to consume alcohol. Can I still cook with wine?—Marc, North Adams, Mass.
A: Cooking with wine is a great way to amp up a range of foods, from sauces to pastas to stews, and wine is central to many classic dishes, such as coq au vin and boeuf Bourguignon. While it’s often assumed that most or all of the alcohol will “burn off” during the cooking process, it makes sense to wonder if that’s actually true—especially if you don’t consume alcohol for medical, religious or personal reasons.
Dr. Scott Rankin, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tells Wine Spectator that “typical cooking steps are not able to completely evaporate ethanol from food.” Rankin explains that when alcohol is mixed with water, the liquids form a special mixture called an azeotrope. This means that as your dish comes to a boil, both water and alcohol evaporate at approximately the same rate, even though the boiling point of alcohol is lower than that of water. The bottom line: “If water still remains in the food, so does ethanol.” For that reason, if you wish to avoid consuming even the smallest amount of alcohol, you might be best off not cooking with wine at all (broth, vinegar and other flavorful liquids make good substitutes).
That said, it’s possible to minimize the amount of alcohol that remains in a dish. Dr. Gavin Sacks, a food science professor at Cornell University, points out that alcohol evaporates at different rates depending on your chosen cooking method and how long you cook the dish. In a typical slow braise, for instance, around 35 percent of the starting amount of alcohol remains after half an hour of cooking. After 2.5 hours, just 4 percent remains. If your braise begins around 12 percent alcohol, the dish’s total alcohol by volume will have dropped to around 0.5 percent after 2.5 hours (the percentage will vary depending on the exact recipe, size and shape of the cooking vessel, cooking temperature and other factors). It’s worth noting that in the U.S., beverages that contain half a percent of alcohol or less are allowed to be labeled as “nonalcoholic.”
Sacks stresses that how much alcohol ends up in a dish also depends on the recipe’s proportions. If you add a standard glass of white wine to a risotto that serves 8 people, each person will consume less than an eighth of a glass, assuming some of the alcohol will evaporate. On the other hand, a stew that calls for an entire bottle of red wine and serves the same number of people will contain more alcohol per serving.
Both experts stress that while the flambé technique makes for a visually impressive bananas Foster, it’s not very good at “burning off” alcohol. One study found that igniting a vodka-spiked caramel sauce made no difference in the amount of alcohol lost (less than 15 percent). That ethanol loss was thanks to heating and evaporation, not combustion.
As always, consult your healthcare provider about incorporating wine into a healthy lifestyle, whether you decide to cook with it or not.—Kenny Martin
