Alcohol in recipes

I didn't know that abstinence made the dart grow longer.

Anyone remember crepes suzette and cherries jubilee, both using brandy and an orange flavoured liqueur, such as Cointreau?

I often use wine, white wine, in sauces for veal recipes

And of course there's veal marsala.

Have you tried beer can chicken on the grill? Absolutely the best chicken recipe, in my opinion.

Beer can chicken? Is this the bachelor meal par excellance?


I've had chicken legs coated with real hot mustard
and poured into the sauce sweet Muscat wine.
The combination tasted excellent.

at Calamity Jane's comment.

It's rather bizarre, but if you like grilled chicken, it's great. Make a few holes in a beer can. Get someone to drink half the beer! Using your favourite rub, sprinkle a little inside a 3 pound chicken and all over the skin, even under the skin, if you like. Sprinkle a little into the beer can through the holes. Insert the beer can into the body cavity of the chicken, moving the legs to form a triangle with the beer can. Tuck the legs behind the back so they don't burn. Grill over indirect heat.

Hi mckenzie,

Beer can chicken, yesiree. I even bought the double stand. What was I thinking?

On alcohol burning off, I have a useful article on that, back in a minute.

I can't tell where I got this quote now, I've had it in my clip files awhile, but the author is named below.



Does Alcohol Really Boil Away in Cooking?

Q. How long does it take for alcohol to burn off during cooking? Is this time the same for all forms of alcohol? Boil? Simmer? How about in baking?

A. Yours may be the question of the year. We thought it was pretty cut and dried. We were wrong. And it has taken a while for us to accept what we've found out.

We started looking through a bunch of authoritative cookbooks to see what they said. In The New Making of a Cook (Canada, UK), as authoritative a source as you can find, Madeleine Kamman cautions that a dish with wine must be cooked long enough to remove the harshness of the alcohol. In fact, she wants you to simmer and reduce the wine separately from the sauce, and add it only when it has been gently reduced to its essence. She does not say how long that takes, however.

Two dozen other major cookbooks we looked at did not address the issue at all. Several stated that the alcohol burns off, but no one took a stab at how quickly or slowly that happens. We looked in our favorite food science books. Nothing. Finally, James Peterson, a cookbook writer who studied chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, mentioned it in his encyclopedic cookbook, Sauces (Canada, UK). He says you need to cook a sauce for at least 20 to 30 seconds after adding wine to it to allow the alcohol to evaporate. And there is some sense to that, since alcohol evaporates at 172°F (78°C), so any sauce or stew that is simmering or boiling is certainly hot enough to evaporate the alcohol.

We still weren't satisfied though. We recalled when we have flambéed foods that it often takes at least a minute for the flames to die out, a sign to us that the alcohol is gone. So we dug around online, and got in touch with various government agencies and trade groups that represent wine and spirits manufacturers.

What we found out has really surprised us. The conventional wisdom accepted by just about everyone in the food world is that all the alcohol you add to a dish evaporates or dissipates during cooking. It's wrong. In fact, you have to cook something for a good three hours to really eradicate all traces of alcohol. And some cooking methods are less effective at removing alcohol than just letting it stand out uncovered overnight.

A study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture's Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking methods. The results are as follows:

Preparation Method Percent of Alcohol Retained:

alcohol added to boiling liquid & removed from heat 85%
alcohol flamed 75%
no heat, stored overnight 70%
baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture 45%

baked/simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture:
15 minutes 40%
30 minutes 35%
1 hour 25%
1.5 hours 20%
2 hours 10%
2.5 hours 5%

Now, it may be that the amount of alcohol in a dish is modest to start with, but the fact that some of the alcohol remains could be of significant concern to recovering alcoholics, parents, and others who have ethical or religious reasons for avoiding alcohol.

Madeleine Kamman, James Peterson and some of our other cooking heroes may be on the mark when stating that the harshness of the alcohol burns off quickly. But the alcohol itself is clearly another matter.





Sun Aug 31, 7:53 AM

By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor

Interesting info - thank you ossobucco

mckenzie,
what does the chicken taste like then?
You just put it on a beer can but don't spill the beer
over the chicken, right?

I admit to not understanding the beer can recipe...

Ooops, I stand corrected!
But then again, I'm neither a cook or a chemist! Just an autodidactic waiter that likes to cook now and then .

Meh, it's simple. If you are concerned about the residual alcohol according to osso's post, then just don't cook with it. The end result, despite statistics is an incredibly low amount of alcohol, but it can certainly be avoided. Check out Moroccan recipes, for a starter. I cook with wine a lot for clients, but not generally for ourselves, for cost, and my health. Haven't tried the beer can chicken thing...seems a bit redneck for me. I actually can roast a proper chicken.

And I cook cheerfully with alcohol, even in my food, all the time. I just thought the info was interesting, and possibly useful for people who need to avoid alcohol.

Calamity Jane, it's really moist because it's steamed from inside by that half-can of beer, which also adds some flavour. You can use a half can of root beer, cola or 7-Up, for that matter.

Osso, you put the half empty beer can upright inside the cavity of the chicken, sit the upright can on the BBQ grill, with the chicken on top, with the two legs resting on the grill to form a triangle.

That's an iffy subject ossobucco.

I for one like to cook with alcohol too, but I once
had dinner guests where the husband of one of my friends
was a recovering alcoholic and I didn't know.

Luckily his wife tasted the sauce before he did,
and he just skipped the sauce alltogether without
making a big deal out of it, and nobody really noticed
either.

Now, I only cook with alcohol when I know for sure
who's eating with us.

Cav, redneck, pfffft!

You might be a redneck if....

You prop a chicken on an open beer can and roast it, or use a power drill to put basting marks into a giant turkey before deep-frying it in the backyard.

Yeah, that is why I mentioned it. Some say it's okay, since the alcohol is burned off, just the flavor left...

Hey, what's wrong with that? Don't you get to knocking my deep-fried turkey now!