I just don’t get the point of vodka sauce for pasta.
Normal pink sauces, having both tomato base, and cream are very good, but most recipies for pink sauce are “vodka sauce” having a decent amount of vodka added.
Why?
The point of vodka is that it is supposed to be as close to tasteless as possible, prefferably having only ethanol and water. If you can taste vodka it is bad cheep vodka.
Other alcohol sources(wine, brandy, whiskey) have flavors that really add to the sauces they are put in, but vodka doesn’t. All you’re a doing is paying a good amount for water and ethanol that you then just boil off, leaving nothing behind.
Okay I do know that recent research shows that the alcohol doesn’t all boil off, leaving a decent percentage behind. Is that the point? Do people want to have noticable ethanol?
The other possible reason is the solvent qualities of ethanol vs water. Some essensess and oils get extracted into ethanol that wouldn’t be in water. Is that the point? Cause most recipes don’t seem to have a whole lot that would fall into the catagory.
Or do you just get cheap nasty vodka, so your sauce can taste like cheap nast yvodka?
Vodka Sauce lovers(are there have to be a lot, they way it has grown lately) why do you do it, rather than a simple vodka-less pink sauce?
Is this really the case? In my experience, it’s the mid-level “meh” vodkas that are tasteless, while the decent ones have a distinct actual character. I like the vodkas made from potatos (Glacier, Chopin, et al) and others with a notable flavor (Ketel One, for example).
I think solubility might actually be the key as I seem to remember an episode of Good Eats wherein Alton talks about tomatoes having alcohol soluble enzymes
There are flavors in tomatoes and other ingredients that don’t dissolve well in water, but do in alcohol. The vodka enhances the flavor of the sauce by dispersing these flavanoids.
At least, this is how it’s always been explained to me.
(My family’s Polish and I grew up drinking vodka. I really never got the point, as, like you say, it doesn’t really have any flavor. I disagree with capybra. Mid-level vodka does have flavor: it tastes like burning water. Vile stuff. The better vodkas are more neutral and smoother. If I must drink vodka [and there are occassions that require it, like when eating pickled herring], Chopin and, surprisingly, Tanqueray vodka are my choice.)
The “point” of the vodka is not to add its own taste, but to use its alcohol to release certain essential oils and other flavor chemicals in the rest of the ingredients.
You’ve heard of “water soluble” and “fat soluble”, right? Well there are also chemical constituents that are “alcohol soluble”. If you want to increase the number of these available in your sauce so your tongue and nose can taste them, you add alcohol. If you ALSO want the taste of tannins and grapes, you add wine. If you don’t, you use vodka, *because *it’s (more or less) tasteless.
ETA: sigh Or, what they said. ^^
Although I will add that most “alcohol soluble” constituents are also water soluble - but alcohol releases more of them with less volume. IOW, if I put 1 ounce of chamomile in 8 ounces of water, I can extract roughly the same amount of the same chemicals I can extract with only 1 once of alcohol. If you don’t want to water down your sauce, vodka gives you the same chemical release, but with less liquid.
There are flavor compounds in tomatoes that alcohol brings out, so that’s why the ethanol. Why vodka instead of wine or some other spirit, I don’t know.
Most high-end ‘authentic’ vodkas I’ve had from Poland and Russia have had a distinct, very palatable, flavor. It’s the cheaper ones that have little taste.
What do you mean by cheap? Smirnoff and the like or true bottom shelf stuff? I don’t believe I’ve ever had midrange vodka but I’ve had both Grey Goose and the cheapest stuff I could buy and all of them taste pretty much alike to me.
Vodka “wakes up” the tomatoes without adding much flavor of its own, like wine does. I like the wine flavor, myself, but it’s definitely a different sauce.
I’ve had the plastic-bottle stuff (Wolfschmitt or Wolfschmidt or whatever the hell it is) and it’s vile, nasty stuff. You can taste it even in mixed drinks, nothing you can do will kill the strong ethanol nastiness and roughness of that stuff.
Perhaps I’m confusing smoothness with flavor, because the higher-end stuff is definitely much smoother and easier on the palate than the low-end stuff, hence making me say that it has less flavor.
Vodka is useful in the kitchen for other properties as well. See the November/December Cook’s Illustrated, page 22, for a recipe for pie dough, of all things, that includes vodka. It’s about the gluten, if you’re curious.