How to use cooking wine, 6 of which are used

Cooking wine is a very mellow-flavored wine with a very low alcohol content and is specifically used as a cooking seasoning. Not only in our country, but also in the United States and Europe, people like to use cooking wine to season dishes. There are many brands of cooking wine and the flavors are different. Today we are going to learn about the uses of cooking wine and why it is so popular.

1. Function: The seasoning function of rice wine is mainly to remove fishy smell and increase fragrance, which increases the aroma of dishes and helps various flavors such as salty and sweet to fully penetrate into the dishes. The reason why cooking wine can play this role is that the ethanol in the wine has a volatile effect, which can make the proteins and amines with fishy smell in meat evaporate. While removing the fishy smell, it will not destroy the protein and lipids in the meat. The second reason is that rice wine contains more sugar and amino acids, which can enhance the aroma and flavor.

2. Usage tips: In different dishes, the time to add wine ingredients varies. The following are some rules I have come up with based on browsing various dishes on food websites.

1. For dishes that are stir-fried quickly, pour in cooking wine after the oil is hot.

Add cooking wine when the temperature in the pot is highest during the entire cooking process. For example, when stir-frying cauliflower, add cooking oil just after the stir-frying is completed. When stir-frying prawns, put the shrimps in immediately after the oil is hot, and then add cooking wine immediately.

3. For dishes such as steamed fish, apply cooking wine on the fish before putting it into the pot. As the temperature rises, the ethanol in the wine begins to take effect, which can not only evaporate the fishy smell with the ethanol, but also allow the ethanol to slowly and fully react chemically with the fatty acids and amino acids in the fish and meat, thereby increasing the aroma of the dish and improving the taste.

4. For fried, braised and stewed dishes, marinate the meat with cooking wine or add cooking wine when braising; for stewed dishes, add cooking wine during the stewing process.

Take the dish of sweet and sour spareribs for example, I am used to frying the ribs first and then stewing them with cooking wine and other seasonings, while my friend is used to marinating them first and then frying them, and the tastes of the dishes are almost the same.

5. For home-cooked stir-fried lean beef, I personally like to marinate the meat with starch, cooking wine and oil. This way the meat will be smooth and tender, without any fishy smell.

6. Fish and meat with poor freshness

Since these dishes contain a lot of fishy substances such as polyamines, they should be soaked in wine before cooking to allow ethanol to penetrate into the fiber tissue of fish and meat, thereby dissolving the amine substances and allowing them to evaporate along with the ethanol during stir-frying.