I make a few delicious dishes that include wine cooked in the sauce. I think the wine adds a lot of flavor, and i suspect that’s more important than the alcohol helping to get other flavors into solution. But i think of wine as a normal cooking ingredient, like hoisin sauce or olive oil or malt vinegar.
Yeah, i think I’m with you on that.
So, if i add half a cup of wine to a dish and simmer it for 15 minutes, 40% if the alcohol remains. And I’m serving it to 3 people, with leftovers. So… That’s like less than a tablespoon of wine per adult serving. Yeah, not going to worry about the psychiatric impact of that on anyone.
I don’t bother putting wine in my recipes, I just chug the bottle while I’m cooking, like culinary bon vivant Graham Kerr used to do on The Galloping Gourmet, before his religious conversion.
Actually, maybe not. It’s from “am i the asshole”, which is a popular Reddit that is widely discussed in other forums, like this one. Lazy journalism? Sure. But terrible, bad journalism? Naw.
I looked up a few recipes and the typical ratio is 1C wine to 2 large cans (7C) tomatoes. Let’s assume for argument that simmering cuts the alcohol by 65%. (per the alcohol burnoff chart for 30 minutes simmer) What this means is the 7C of sauce has the equivalent of 2.8oz of wine in it.
Assume 1C of sauce per serving and you have 0.4 ounces of ‘wine’ in each serving, less than one Tablespoon.
Yeah you’re right. In the amounts I use (about 6 oz for a lb of meat) the flavor of the wine itself will be the biggest factor. But even small amounts in a pan sauce are noticeable. I must have been thinking more of vodka.
This.
Though in answer to the OP, yeah they should have asked first. Personally I wouldn’t have cared, I think all the alcohol would have boiled off (though I’ve seen different opinions on this) but that’s not your call to make for someone else’s kid (there are a whole bunch of considerations beyond simple practical amount of alcohol left on the sauce)
Generally is these days of prevalent allergies it’s considered polite to list the ingredients and ask permission before giving any food to a kid that’s not your own (my daughters preschool class has a couple of kids with allergies, including one very serious set of multiple allergens including things you would not think of)
I always ask about dietary restriction before i prepare food for people. I think the question is “should you just assume that wine is completely off limits for kids”, and my answer is “no”. I also use vanilla extract that is alcohol based when cooking for kids, and i think of wine as just another possible ingredient. If you don’t want me to give your kids food that includes a little wine for flavoring, you should mention that when you mentioned their peanut allergy, or their egg sensitivity, or their aversion to tuna fish.
A true allergy to alcohol is rare. Alcohol intolerance or allergy to one of the components (wheat, barley, rye, hops, yeast, grapes) is more common.
I agree care should be taken in preventing children from being subjected to food allergens, but I believe the onus should be on the parent to inform the chef of any allergies their child has, not throwing a fit after the fact.
There is no way a restaurant (or home cook) can list every potential allergen on its menu, even if it lists all the basic ingredients. For example, many people are allergic to the preservatives butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) (in fact I was as a child). They are listed on food product labels, but I never saw them listed on a restaurant menu. If you ask a well-informed, culinary school-trained chef if one of his dishes has BHA or BHT in it, he will probably know. But most cooks won’t have a clue.
IOW, if your child has a severe allergy, especially a rare allergy, don’t rely on the word of ill-informed cooks, or restaurant menus, do your homework as a parent and take responsibility for your child’s health, even if that means cooking all your kid’s meals at home, from scratch.
It’s time for you to find some friends that aren’t crazy.
I disagree. You and I don’t think it’s a big deal, but there is a wide section of society that does for a whole bunch of reasons, and it’s not reasonable to assume they will consider the possibility that you’ll offer their kid a wine sauce, and explicitly point out that is not OK.
This is what my daughter’s classmates family does (they will provide a home cooked alternative when there are birthday cupcakes or whatever) but it’s still a matter of of common courtesy to always point out the ingredients and ask permission for before offering food to someone else’s kid (as well as being a final safety check, as raising kids being a fraught as it is, it’s very easy to assume you had already told someone about the allergies)
Additionally it’s a good routine to teach your kids. Before accepting food from someone outside the family you ask mum and dad. Before offering food to another kid they need to ask their mum and dad.
My brother was an alcoholic, but even after 30 years of sobriety, he would not eat anything with alcohol in it. I don’t think it a fear of becoming intoxicated; I think he was afraid that he might somehow relapse and become the raving asshole he was before sobriety. I had to respect that.
Yeah, but it wouldn’t even occur to me that there’s wine in, say, the bolognese I make. It’s an ingredient I don’t even have a second thought about. A lot of Chinese dishes I make have Shiaoxing wine splashed into them. I literally forget that is even wine when I cook with it, it’s such a reflexive ingredient, and that’s in many of my stir fries. Also, as mentioned, what about vanilla? If I’m making a buttercream vanilla frosting, that won’t even have anything cooked out of it, and it’s at a minimum 70 proof if you are using pure vanilla extract.
And, in the circles I run in, nobody would even give the littlest shit about it. If you can’t have alcohol in any amount in my food, you have to tell me.
This. All my Chinese stir fries have some wine. (I ran out of Shiaoxing, and just replaced it with cheap Chardonnay. Works fine.) Probably a lot of the dishes they buy at Chinese restaurants do, too, they just don’t know. A few of my other meat sauces include wine. I cook with vanilla and sometimes other alcohol-based extracts.
I would certainly not offer a glass of wine to a child, or a glass of beer. But if there are any ingredients that might be in cooked food that you don’t want me to give your kids, you should mention that when I ask about dietary restrictions and preferences. Which I always do. If you think that wine is totally off limits as an ingredient, you ought to know you are in a minority and mention that. I’m more than happy to avoid anything you don’t want me feeding your kid, but you have to tell me.
Which leads me to wonder how they even learned that there was wine in the sauce. Did the kids love it and they asked for the recipe?
I miswrote. I meant the opposite of gourmet OR foodie. I understand the confusion. We are neither gourmets or foodies.