And that’s if you are adding the wine into the simmering liquid.
When I cook with wine, I add it as the first liquid. Usually I’ll brown some onions or mirepoix, maybe some garlic and shallots, in butter or olive oil. Then I add the wine, and reduce it down to almost nothing before I add in the rest of the liquids.
I assume that when cooking by that method, far less of the alcohol is retained.
The Reddit thread explains:
Good point. That’s actually what I generally do, too. Which may be why I really don’t taste alcohol in the finished sauce.
Yep, my standard method for bolognese involves frying up the meat and mirepoix/soffrito, then dumping in about a half cup or a little more of white wine in a couple infusions and letting it cook down to almost nothing, then adding the milk and doing the same, then the tomatoes and beef stock. There is very little liquid left when the wine cooks off.
Anyway, I actually take a certain degree of pride in being able to accommodate the dietary preferences and needs of a wide variety of friends. I’ve served meals that catered to vegans, kosher people, a woman with celiac disease, a kid with a peanut allergy, a woman who had an extreme sensitivity to corn and chicken (no corn starch, corn syrup, or eggs) and a guy who had a fatal allergy to nightshades. And everyone ate comfortably. (There were several dishes, all carefully laid out to avoid cross-contamination)
But you have to tell me.
^This.
As I understand it, any amount of fermentation causes alcohol so yogurt, pickles, ketchup, etc. are going to contain certain amounts of alcohol and I wouldn’t be surprised if nearly any food item has a small amount of natural fermentation going on at miniscule levels.
Yeah but as pointed out if someone doesn’t think their kid should be having a sauce with booze in it its most likely not because of an actual medical intolerance to alcohol, its for some social reason. And for whatever reason society does not consider that “booze” (even accounting for the concentration its still going to be far less volume of alcohol than a decent wine sauce I’m pretty sure, before reducing at least, though I’ve heard different stories as to how much alcohol actually gets removed by simmering).
I’m not sure how Muslims or LDS feel about it though?
So looking online, there do seem to be many sources that say the alcohol in the wine does release various “flavor molecules” from the other ingredients and the alcohol acts as a flavor enhancer, and not just imbue its own flavor, but I can’t find anything that reads of hard science about it. So I wonder if this may be one of those culinary myths. Then again, adding pure vodka (which has no inherent flavor of its own but its booziness), does seem to change the final character of a dish (as tested here), so maybe there is some effect.
I haven’t made spaghetti sauce in years – it’s so much easier to just buy a jar. Maybe it’s time to try again, and add a bit of wine to see how it turns out.
I do occasionally add wine to my chili.
If someone thinks that, then that someone should say something. I don’t know what everybody’s bugaboo is.
Yeah - I was suspecting if these folk who add wine to recipes do so so that they can can say, “Well, I guess I have to finish off the bottle!” 
I believe you, but that sounds odd coming from a recovering alky. I don’t know about the vanilla - I imagine I’ve been ingesting some minuscule alcohol in baked goods. But it is very foreign to my personal experience to hear that it “wouldn’t even occur” to a recovering alcoholic that the stuff he/she is sloshing into their food is the same stuff that used to cause them problems. And no, I’ve never been one of those dry drunks who won’t have booze in their house or who doesn’t want others drinking around me.
What you say probably reflects a healthy attitude towards alcohol, but I personally cannot imagine someone not being aware of the ingredients they added to a dish - whether alcohol, salt, or whatever.
We do not cook anything fancy, although we like the flavor of what we cook and eat pretty healthily. We never got in the habit of adding wine simply because we don’t want to waste any good wine in a recipe where quality booze wouldn’t make a big difference, and we didn’t want to buy cheap wine just to be able to add a little amount to the occasional recipe.
If you gave me the 2 sauces side by side - one with wine and one without - I imagine I could taste a difference and I might even prefer the one with wine. But more significantly, I’d just think they were 2 plates of red sauce on pasta, and either would be just fine.
I’m not exactly sure what happened in the linked story. If the babysitting was last minute, and the sitter’s family was sitting down to a pre-planned meal with the wine sauce and the kid wanted a plate, I could see that happen. But if I were watching a kid and the food was not already planned/prepared, I would certainly think twice before thinking, “Let’s fix this other person’s kid some food with booze in it!”
Friend’s mom is loony. I feel bad for her son.
Everybody’s different. I don’t go crazy avoiding all alcohol at all costs. I’m still here and fine and haven’t gone on a bender. I cook with the stuff, nobody’s overseeing me, I can take a swig if I want, but I don’t. We have a couple bottles of wine in the house, since my wife occasionally drinks. I absolutely respect people who have a 100% prohibition on it. I don’t avoid alcoholic mouthwash. I use alcoholic vanilla. I really don’t think about it as anything more than an ingredient when I’m cooking.
I buy cheap wine in “airplane” bottles or small boxes, the type that comes with a screw cap. After I open it, I put in in the fridge. I try to keep both red and white in stock. My wine-for-cooking budget is pretty minimal, but may be higher than my wine-for-drinking budget, as I don’t enjoy getting drunk, and rarely drink a glass of wine other than on Passover.
It really makes a difference in all manner of foods, though. And you don’t need good wine. Cheap mediocre wine is totally fine.
That’s generally what I do, or buy the small $5 box that’s like two glasses of wine (I think 375 mL). I’ll use half and freeze the other half for another day. It seems to work fine to me.
If someone sends their kid to my house, I think they should warn me if there is going to be unexpected whine afterwards.
I’m not, either. Which is why they should tell me if they don’t want me to include tiny amounts of it in food I give their kids. I’m happy to read the small print on ingredient labels to accommodate your preferences, too. I’m really very careful to respect the food requests of my guests.
If this were in a predominantly strictly alcohol-free community, of course that would shift the burden of reasonable expectation.
Ha-ha! 