#CulinaryTruth Alcohol never completely cooks out of anything...ever.
— Alton Brown (@altonbrown) April 10, 2021
Cooking shows are supposed to be accurate. They usually are, except for the constantly repeated mantra: "The alcohol will cook out." You can say it 3 times in a mirror but that doesn't make it true.
Most of us don't have an issue as to whether the alcohol cooks out. The concern is for those where alcohol is a concern and they are being told a dangerous lie.
You likely enjoyed when McDonald's cooked your French fries in beef tallow a couple of decades ago. The Indians who don't consume anything from cows as well as other vegans were upset to find out they had consumed beef tallow unknowingly.
Say "virtually." Journalists use "allegedly" or "police said." Like when dietitians and many others on the mainstream side of food say that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are virtually the same. There is a wide difference between them. At least they aren't saying they are the same.
The alcohol is the reason why you put that into dishes. Alton Brown has noted that tomatoes are rich in alcohol-soluble compounds.
The world is now filled with fake cocktails for those who want the taste of alcohol. Your humble narrator has tried a ton of them and rejected all that taste like the alcohol in question.
Here comes the nerdy part about what happens to the alcohol when you cook, courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
Alcohol evaporates when it’s heated. So in theory, cooking will make it evaporate away. And, because the boiling point of ethanol (173 degrees) is lower than that of water (212 degrees), it seems like you should be able to cook off all the alcohol in a dish without cooking off all of its water.
In practice, it doesn’t work that way. When alcohol and water are combined, they dissolve into each other, forming a solution whose boiling point is neither 173° nor 212°, but variable, depending on the ratio of the ingredients.
The more you cook off alcohol from a dish, the lower the ratio of alcohol to water in the dish becomes, which means the alcohol cooks off more and more slowly. Finally, when the alcohol level reaches about 5 percent, it plateaus, and won't get any lower.
The story notes that a stew containing wine, simmered at 185° for 10 minutes, has as much as 60% of the initial alcohol while that same stew simmered at 185° for 2½ hours has about 6% of the initial alcohol.
This comes up for alcoholics as well as those on medicine where you aren't supposed to drink, such as antidepressants.
A trick I use is to buy small bottles of wine (as seen above) and use them for cooking. This can be helpful in situations where you are living with someone who might be tempted by a whole bottle. This example won't help every case but a great option where that is viable.
Your tomato dish or whatever you are cooking will be just fine without alcohol. Stock and white wine vinegar are good options but there isn't a limit on them. The America's Test Kitchen story notes that "fruit juice naturally contains alcohol" so keep that in mind.
Twitter capture: @altonbrown
photo credit: manufacturer (not an endorsement of a specific company)
