How to Add Wine to a Slow Cooker

Any wine added to a slow cooker should be good enough to drink as well.

Similar to cooking with spices, adding wine to a dish helps bring out the flavor in food. The aroma that comes from the wine enhances the flavor profile created in the dish because you eat with all of your senses, not just your taste buds. Alcohol's composition allows the flavors of the wine to bond with the fats found in the dishes, while the heat used to cook the food evaporates the alcohol content away. Wine can be added to dishes being made in slow cookers to create both richer tasting food as well as flavorful sauces to top the food with.

Instructions

1. Choose a wine that's appropriate for your dish; although no longer a hard and fast rule, you generally want to choose a red wine for beef, pork, lamb, veal and most game meat, such as bison or venison. Select a white wine if the main component in your dish is poultry, fowl game, seafood, or vegetables.

2. Add the wine when you add the other liquid components to the dish at the beginning, such as water, Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce.

3. Set the temperature of the slow cooker to high and place the lid in a manner so that some of the liquid can evaporate.

4. After a couple of hours, turn the slow cooker down to low and replace the lid, stirring the contents of the slow cooker as needed.

Tips & Warnings

• If making a pan sauce from the liquid that you added the wine to, remove the solid components from the slow cooker and add the liquid to a saucepan. Add a small amount of water mixed with flour or cornstarch, or a couple pats of butter, and reduce your sauce on the stove to serve with your meal.

References

• Cooking Light: Cooking with Wine
• "Fine Cooking": Alcohol's Role in Cooking
• Relish: How to Cook With Wine

Resources

• RecipeTips.com: Slow Cooked Beef Short Ribs in Wine Sauce Recipe
• AllRecipes.com: Slow Cooker Chicken with Mushroom Wine Sauce