Best Red Wines for Cooking

Best cooking wine. You could think you don’t need a good wine for cooking. But it isn’t true at all. The great chefs use the best ingredients in their recipes. Why shouldn’t you?

We have to consider a point: good ingredients give a better result.

Let’s see some recipes to find out which is the best red wine for cooking.

We can fix a full menu using two of the best red Tuscan wines: Chianti and Brunello.

The alcohol, while you are cooking, evaporates; in such a way the wine gives its peculiar flavor to the dish.

Risotto al Chianti

The first recipe is Risotto al Chianti. You need a spring onion, extra virgin olive oil, a cup of rice, a cup and a half of Chianti wine, two cups of vegetable broth, salt, butter and Parmesan cheese.

Fry the chopped onion in the olive oil, as soon as it is golden add rice. Mix with a wooden spoon for a few minutes, then pour wine. Don’t forget to mix the rice during the cooking, adding salt and vegetable broth until you get a dense but creamy risotto. Off the stove, add butter and Parmigiano Reggiano, mix and serve.

Brasato al Brunello di Montalcino

The second dish is Brasato al Brunello di Montalcino, a recipe with braised meat. You need a bottle of Brunello, some butter, one carrot, three cloves, one onion, some flour, extra virgin olive oil, ground pepper, salt, two pounds of beef rump, a celery stalk, a clove of garlic. Put the meat into the wine with vegetable and aromas for a night. Then strain vegetables, flour and fry them. Do the same with the meat. Cook it for three hours and a half with marinating wine. Whisk the vegetables and put them in the sauce, cut slices of meat and mix. Serve with potatoes.

Chianti cake

The third recipe is sweet: Chianti cake.

Cocoa powder two oz, sugar one pound, butter half a pound, Chianti wine a glass and a half, baking powder, salt, chocolate half a tablet, four eggs, a cup of flour. Put cocoa, butter, sugar, Chianti wine and salt into a pan. Cook over low heat till you have a cream. Pour a cup of cream keeping a little aside as a finishing touch. Mix the rest with eggs, flour, chocolate, baking powder. Pour it in a cake tin folded with baking paper. Cook for half an hour at 325 degrees. Let it cool down, cut the surface here and there and top it with the cream.

By now, you have no doubt picked up the best red wine for cooking: could you bet it would be the same choice for drinking? In order not to get lost, you could choose an exciting winery Tuscan tour  entrusting a good specialized agency  with this pleasant engaging task.

Small annotation.

Red wine is also typically used in sauces, but more to give flavor and color vs adding texture. It is really important with red wine that you use a relatively good (or at least not awful / vinegarred) red wine for cooking, otherwise the dish tastes like pickles. If the recipe calls for a particular type of red wine (merlot, pinot noir, etc), use what it asks for. If it asks for any red wine, use your favorite. After all, the point of this dish is that you enjoy eating it. If the recipe asks for a type of red wine, go with: light bodied (pinot noir, merlot); full bodied (cabernet, chianti).