Not for drinking - for cooking with. See, we’re not drinkers, but I do use wine in cooking. This means that often, like last night, I end up with a full botttle minus 1/2 a cup of wine - and I may not make anything with wine in it for weeks. Generally I end up throwing it out and buying another bottle next time I need wine. (Occasionally I’ll let it vinegar and use it as wine vinegar, but it’s still useless as wine.)
So it ocurred to me last night: Could I freeze the wine, maybe in cubes, and keep it frozen until needed? Would it stay wine that way?
a few weeks shouldn’t turn it to vinegar should it?
I keep a jug in my cupboard that I use for cooking and that stays there for months and is still useable. Mabye that jug wine is given more preservatives or something though.
My wine turns funky pretty fast, even in the fridge. Maybe it’s just really bad wine.
Or maybe the jug shape affects something. I don’t know. Looks like no one else does, either.
Most wines intended for drinking will oxidize and otherwise go bad pretty quickly once opened.
You’re in luck - the latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine says yes, you can freeze wine for cooking with later. Probably the best method is to pour a tablespoon of wine into each compartment of an ice cube tray, freeze, then pop the cubes into a freezer bag and label it so you know what’s in there.
Wine has a high alcohol content, so you might need to adjust your freezer to actually get it frozen. I would have guess that freezing it would make it separate out and be quite nasty, but if CIllustrated says it works, it probably does.
I think your best bet for fresh unfrozen cooking wine are boxed wines: they seem to last longer in a fridge since you never really “open” them to the outside air. I’m not sure what the design behind them is, but if they are smart the valve shouldn’t take in excess air when the wine comes out: the bag should just get compressed. I doubt that’s really the case though (probably too expensive a mechanism for a cheap box), so maybe boxed wine will go bad just as fast when that air goes in.
In general you don’t need good tasting wine to cook with anyway. Cooking wine has to be drinkable without the need to grimace or going too sour, but cooking basically destroys any of the subtle flavors you get from drinking wine. As long as it’s decent, you can get the right effect when you cook with it: most of these effects are chemical alterations of the other ingredients rather than tasting the wine itself.
Actually, that’s pretty much the reason for making boxed wine - the bag and tap system means that very little wine is exposed to the air. IIRC it should be good for about 2 weeks - maybe longer? I’ve read a few reviews lately of boxed wines, and some have been rated pretty well as decent table wines.
I love vermouth, and use it in a lot of chicken and pork recipes. It does last a lot longer (like seemingly indefinite, to my wooden palate). Any ideas for a similar switcheroo for red wines, like burgandy, in my beef recipes?
Mine too—that’s pretty normal. Within two or three days it’s unfit for drinking and therefore for cooking. If you wouldn’t drink it, I wouldn’t cook with it is my rule.
I would try the freezing trick, but the rule in my house is once a bottle of wine is opened it must be finished that sitting.
I freeze wine for cooking all the time. Anything left in the bottle goes into the ice cube trays – it’s very handy! AND it was a tip from Martha Stewart herself, so there you go.
Port is good for cooking with pork and venison where the sweetness of the port can be used to advantage. A dry red Sherry could be used with beef to good effect. But mostly you should be able to use up an entire half bottle or more of red in any beef dish so if you serve a glass of with the meal as well you shouldn’t have much left to spoil.
I would recoment drinking the same wine as you cook with with a meal when it is a reasonable cheap wine, and not a special meal deserving a special wine. It just goes so well to have the same wine with the dish as is in the dish.
Sake and Chinese Rice Wines keep well for cooking purposes in the fridge. Cheap brandy is also a good thing to have available for cooking.
No it doesn’t. Wine has no more than 15.5% alcohol content - much much lower than your average liquor. You should have no trouble freezing it in a conventional freezer.
