Wine is a favoured ingredient of many professional and home cooks who love to add it to their dishes to create flavoursome sauces. However, as with any other ingredient, it’s important to use it in the right way if you want to get a really great result.
When you cook sous vide, the way ingredients respond can be different to how they do when prepared with traditional methods, so you may have to alter the way you do certain things in order to get the delicious flavours and wonderful textures. This is particularly true when using wine in your cooking.
Can You Use Wine When Cooking Sous Vide?
In short, yes! There is no reason why you can’t enjoy the same recipes that call for wine when cooking sous vide, you may simply need to alter things a little. Adding wine to your sous vide recipes can result in rich, deep and complex flavours, taking your cooking to the next level.
How Can You Cook Sous Vide With Wine?
The main difference between the traditional method of cooking with wine and cooking sous vide is the fact that the ingredients are in a vacuum sealed bag, so any liquid that would usually evaporate is trapped inside the bag. This means that the alcohol cannot cook off as it needs to evaporate.
The best way to approach cooking Sous Vide with wine is to reduce the wine before adding it to the bag. This will allow the alcohol to evaporate, leaving you with a liquid which will make the perfect sauce for your recipes. Reducing the wine will also concentrate the flavour (which will dilute when it’s mixed with the juices that come out of meat).
What Can You Cook With Wine?
There are plenty of recipes that you can use to make delicious sous vide dishes with your favourite wines, with a few of our favourites being:
- Sous Vide Coq Au Vin
This recipe calls for a bottle of French red wine and uses it by cooking off the alcohol in a saucepan with other ingredients before adding them to the bags with the chicken. This leaves you with a rich sauce and perfectly cooked chicken. - Braised Blade of Beef with Red Wine Shallots, Creamed Spinach and Mash
The wine in this recipe is used in two ways, giving this dish a real depth. As with the previous recipe, the wine is reduced with other ingredients before being added to the bag holding the beef. However, this recipe also calls for a little red wine to be added to a separate bag with shallots, giving a stronger flavour. - Sous Vide Rabbit Leg with Muscat Wine, Grilled Young Vegetables and Soft Herbs
For this game recipe, you will need a good Muscat wine which will be reduced along with the herbs and spices. The combination of the wine with saffron, star anise, cardamom, orange and other ingredients will pair perfectly with the distinct flavour of rabbit.
Make sure to keep an eye on our recipes so you can try out new and exciting sous vide dishes. We stock a range of cooking tools which will help you to create delicious recipes with a difference. You can browse our home sous vide shop or our professional sous vide shop to see our selection of products.
FAQs
In short, yes! There is no reason why you can't enjoy the same recipes that call for wine when cooking sous vide, you may simply need to alter things a little. Adding wine to your sous vide recipes can result in rich, deep and complex flavours, taking your cooking to the next level.
Does cooking with wine make a difference? ›
Wine's acidity also helps more delicate ingredients stay tender and moist in quicker-cooking recipes, such as poached vegetables or steamed fish. As wine cooks, its flavor becomes concentrated, so it also lends savoriness or sweetness to a dish. Generally, dry red and white wines are recommended for savory dishes.
What happens when you cook meat with wine? ›
Wine is basically an acid ingredient (which helps tenderize the outside of the meat) and it has a lot of flavor. The wine-based marinade helps keep meat, poultry, or seafood moist while it cooks, too.
Can meat be overcooked in sous vide? ›
So, while it's certainly very difficult to overcook your food using sous vide, to say that it's impossible is a little bit of an overstatement. Just remember that while you technically can't 'overcook' your food, the quality could start to decline if it's left to cook for a lot longer than is recommended.
Does bacteria grow in sous vide? ›
Harmful bacteria can't grow above that temperature, and at around 135ºF, most bacteria will actually be destroyed after a few hours, making pasteurization possible. The precision temperature control of sous-vide cooking means it actually has the potential to be safer than traditional cooking methods.
Do chefs like sous vide? ›
Restaurant chefs have geeked out for decades over the highly precise temperature control they can get from this method, which can unlock the perfect texture and flavor from proteins and vegetables alike.
Can you use Ziploc bags for sous vide? ›
Ziplock and Glad brand bags are made from polyethylene plastic, and are free of BPAs and dioxins. A good rule of thumb is that when a bag is rated as microwave safe (which requires FDA approval) you can use it for sous vide. Even Dr. Schaffner agrees.
What is the first thing I should sous vide? ›
Let us help you and take the guesswork out of what to make first. These 5 things are a MUST to make with your new immersion circulator! A steak is 100% the #1 thing you need to make with the sous vide!
What is the best thing to sous vide? ›
The Best Foods To Cook Sous Vide
- Tougher Cuts of Meat. What's important to remember here is that a 'tougher' or 'cheaper' cut of meat, doesn't necessarily mean a 'worse' cut. ...
- Eggs. Eggs are one of the most popular foods to cook sous-vide for a couple of reasons. ...
- Pork. ...
- Lamb. ...
- Carrots. ...
- Filleted Fish. ...
- Liver. ...
- Fillet Steak.
When sous-vide cooking, the alcohol can't evaporate. However, during cooking, the structure of the alcohol will undergo changes and, due to the heat, the taste and aroma of said alcohol will be enhanced. In this case, when the mixture has cooled, the alcohol will return to being part of the recipe like at the start.
In the SousVide Supreme, the process takes only hours to make your own infused alcohols and syrups. Almost any fruit can be used to make delicious syrup and many fruits, herbs, spices, and even peppers can be used to flavor alcohol. Here are some recipes to try out.
Does alcohol cook out of cooking wine? ›
Depending on the cooking method and how much alcohol is used, anywhere from 4 to 85 percent of the alcohol may remain. After 15 minutes of cooking, about 40 percent of the alcohol remains. Even after an hour of cooking, about 25 percent is left, and 10 percent remains after two hours.
