Cooking With Alcohol

We used to serve turkey fries at this restaurant I worked at in college. They were really good.

 

Isn't this really, just the same as, like sprinkling some crack on there. Of course you are going to like the alcohol. Not only are you addcited to it, but it makes you think you like it better, and the cook, well, they get hammered in the process.

 

The boiling point of alcohol is about 40 degrees lower than water, so the booze is the first thing to evaporate. Say you deglase a pan with wine and then reduce the liquid by half (a common recipe instruction)......the alcohol content in the wine is LONG gone before you're even close to serving.

Of course.....cooks have been known to take a few sips here and there while cooking. At least this cook has.

 

that's it. After you saute something, you end up with little brown bits of carmalized food that is stuck to the pan. These food particles are generally loaded with flavor, so you put a liquid like wine in the pan and stir to loosed them up. Besides cleaning the pan, you end up with a very tasty sauce/gravy.

 

I got this stand where you put a beer in it and stuff it up a chickens ass and cook it. It was yummy.

 

i always wondered about those. which beer do you use?

 

we've used budweiser regular and coors light...coudn't taste much difference. The best thing we used oddly enough was Dr. Pepper. I called it Dr. Pepper chicken. I did a dry rub of Chicken fajita seasoning and a eensy teensy bit of ground cinnamon and stuffed a Dr. Pepper up it's arse and cooked it on the top rack of a big outdoor grill. OMG it was AWESOME!

I would have mentioned the Dr. Pepper earlier but this was a cooking with alcohol thread and I didn't want to derail it. I hope I haven't now

 

you sure do like to emphasis that you have to stuff a beverage up a chicken's ass huh Chance?

 

Beer can chicken. You can use a regular can (pop the top, of course). Grill on low heat. As the chicken grills, the beer continuously steams into the chicken, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Works like a charm.

Vodka works in cream sauce - you'll see vodka ravioli, vodka cream angel hair, etc. Also nice with lump crab meat or shrimp.

Bourbon is a nice glaze with chicken or beef. It burns off fast, so add when cooking is pretty much done, and just slightly simmer. Bourbon chicken is an old southern favorite, and you see a lot of steak with bourbon-infused sauces.

Rum is for fruit. Banannas foster, that kind of thing. Poof - flambe.
Just a trick. Way too sugary for meat.

Cognac is really too grape-y. You can't burn it down, have to simmer. You can simmer cognac into a cream sauce, but I prefer vodka.

Champagne is great in cream sauce. Add very late, to preserve the effervescence. Too hot, and it's just sugary vinegar.

Wine - bleh. I've cooked with wine for many years, and never really got the benefit. It's fun to drink a glass, but liquor is so far superior, I can't imagine why some luddites choose to remain in the dark ages. It doesn't really tenderize or flavor the meat, it just thins a sauce same as water and vinegar. Big zero.

Beer has a lot more to offer in terms of flavor and body. Unfortunately, I detest the horrible bitter hops taste. Often applied for thinning something that's going to taste like liquid bread anyway.

Gin is excellent on fish - but not much else. Juniper is hard to work with. Maybe in a basil-infused salad dressing?

Tequila - oh, dear. Oily, sour, bitter. Not so much application for that. More the lime. Chicken is often so colorless that tequila can make it lively. Not much else.

 

oh yes, damn I like this stuff

 

No, not really. But it's true. You have to wrestel the chicken, pin it on its back, and stuff a can of beer up his hiney to cook it. IT's just a fact of life. You can't cook the chicken without stuffing a can of beer up its rear end. You must stuff it so that it is stuffed full of beer in its rear.