How would you expect someone to give an example of something not being shown on a menu? How do you know that the bolognese in the menu that you linked does not contain wine?
I’ve recently gotten into soy sauces and have been surprised that some have added alcohol and many more have trace amounts from the bean fermentation.
Also, dijon mustard.
Mustn’t forget the hidden dangers of ethyl alcohol based hand sanitizer.
In order to claim that every restaurant would state clearly, you’d be suggesting that there actually is a requirement to do so.
So, you are not saying that restaurants are under any requirement to label that they use wine to make their sauces?
I see many dishes on there that almost certainly have wine as part of their cooking process, that don’t list it.
For instance Chicken Scaloppine pretty much has to have wine in it. It just won’t come out right if it doesn’t. But it’s not listed on the menu.
If you want, I’ll call them up in a couple hours when their lunch rush has calmed down and ask them if they use alcohol in it. Or you can, if you want to know for yourself.
It is listed as an ingredient so that the customer knows what flavors to expect, not to tell if there is alcohol in it.
It’s possible a place like that might not have it but wine is an expectation in any decent bolgnese sauce.
Agreed.
Though I think this is changing. I would actually put soda ahead of a wine sauce in terms of stuff that needs to be ran by a parent, before it was offered to a kid. Though assorted grannies and older aunties probably don’t feel that way.
Unfortunately, I’ve been out of the restaurant scene for over a decade now, so I can’t guarantee it to be the case, but I was looking at some of the menus of places that I worked of dishes they served that used alcohol in the cooking, and it was not listed on the menu.
I know that my knowledge of the specs isn’t a cite, and I also know that they may have changed spec since I worked there, but I feel fairly confident in my conclusion here.
Do you actually see those as equivelant?
Is your objection to wine in a pasta sauce medical or religious, where any amount of alcohol, no matter how small matters? Or is it that you don’t want your kid getting intoxicated?
If the former, then you do need to take some responsibility in letting people know what dietary restrictions your child has. If the latter, then it’s not enough alcohol to have even the slightest effect on intoxication.
Would you have a problem if they gave your child bread?
I don’t disagree- but when they mention the wine in the veal marsala , I kind of think the bolognese doesn’t have any.
How much wine in a recipe for 8? 1/2 cup?
Do you mean this literally? I can’t see myself listing all the ingredients in every dish I was making:
"OK, I’m making beef stew that’s got cubes of beef coated in flour and sautéd in olive oil. That’s simmered in beef stock with a bouquet garni of parsley, thyme, and bay leaves; balsamic vinegar; garlic; onions; salt; and black pepper. The stew also contains canned tomatoes; which list tomatoes and salt as the only ingredients; carrots; red potatoes; and cornstarch.
“With the stew, I’ll be making dumplings, which contain white flour, baking powder…”
If I were the parent of the kid who was the guest, I’d rather just say, “Jimmy can’t have any foods containing eggs, and our religion forbids the use of alcohol in cooking” if that were the case, than listen to the entire list of ingredients for each dish in the meal.
My family has religious dietary restrictions, my kid has allergies, and some of his friends have serious life-threatening allergies. It would never occur to us or to those kids’ parents that it’s anybody ELSE’S responsibility to make sure their food is OK for us. Sure, it’s polite for them to ask if we have any dietary restrictions, but if they don’t, it’s on us to bring it up, and not to make them guess about what we’ll be ok with.
I actually didn’t have an objection to my 8 year old having a little wine or beer as long as my husband or I were there. They are only equivalent in “it might not occur” to someone to tell another person.
I don’t make the same assumption. If the wine or alcohol is part of the draw or a main defining flavoring of the dish – as it is in “marsala,” hence being named after a wine – it gets pointed out. If it’s just one of many usual ingredients, like in bolognese, where the flavor is just part of the whole and more buried and used to build up the meat flavor, it’s not mentioned. The local places I looked at don’t seem to mention wine in the bolognese because it’s expected and the dish is not about the wine flavoring, while they do point out alcohol in other dishes.
Generally just the big ticket items (that are likely to be a problem, for allergy or social reasons) for me personally I’d say “We are making a beef stew with flour and butter dumplings, is it OK if Jimmy has some?”
Any less than that would be a faux pas IMO (you could argue its OK just to leave it as “Beef stew” and let them ask about specific requirements, but saying nothing and letting them know after the fact Jimmy had beef stew would not fly nowadays, even if the parents don’t mention any requirements).
And it wouldn’t necessarily occur to the host that you would object to cooking with wine. It’s a pretty common thing to do.
I assume it also wouldn’t occur to you to tell them not to give them bread either, even though it would contain more alcohol than a pasta sauce made with wine?
When I make beef stew, I use wine.
It’s pretty common to do so.
Yeah, for 8 servings, 1/2 cup is about right. So even if the alcohol is not at all cooked out, that is 1 tablespoon of wine per serving (and I assume a kid will eat about a standard size serving, whereas I might double it for an adult, the gluttons we are). That is the equivalent of about a half teaspoon of vodka. And that’s assuming zero loss to evaporation, which isn’t the case at all.
Same here, I put wine in tons of my sauces (even my curry sauce, much to my wife chagrin who’s a purist).
If we were serving it to one of my daughters friends or a cousin, I would absolutely run it past their parents first (in fact I’d probably avoid using it for a kids meal, though thats more a flavor thing. My eldest has a philosophical objection to sauce of all kinds, so you have to have “plausibly deniable” sauce on her noodles and rice)
To me its trivially true that:
A: Lots of people, like a significant proportion of society (religious or otherwise), don’t want their kids served food with booze in it (and yeah there are other ways alcohol ends up in kids food, but a “wine sauce” is undeniably adding booze to your food)
B: Being served food with booze in it is not be something most people would consider when dropping off their kids at our house.
Which is why I said “furious” is an overreaction.
Of course they wouldn’t be expecting food with booze in it. Of course, the implication of having “booze” is that it has significant amounts of alcohol. I’ve never before this thread heard of use of wine in cooking as putting “booze” in a dish.
Looking up the definition of booze, I see
So the implication that you are making here is that you are giving children hard liquor, which is not the case at all. It would require some pretty serious stretching of the word to have it include the miniscule amounts of alcohol left after cooking.
Is there a reason that you chose that word? Do you actually think that it is accurate, or are you trying to make some sort of implication here by using such a loaded word?
While I would not want my kids (if I had any) served food with booze in it, I would never in a million years describe using wine in cooking as putting booze in it.