Luxuries - Wine

Let me preface this entry by standing on a soap box for a moment.  If you are on government assistance, please don’t drink alcohol.  Alcohol is expensive, and you need that money in your budget to pay for your bills.  I say this as someone with experience.  First off, I don’t drink beer, but I don’t drink wine or spirits unless it’s something someone has brought over.  In the years I have been on food stamps, I have bought alcohol for my consumption about once a year.

Here’s the thing.  As much as we’ve tried to disguise them as debit cards, most people know exactly what a food stamp card in their area looks like.  They also, whether we like it or not, notice what someone who is using a food stamp card is buying.  There is nothing that upsets many people more than seeing someone using a food stamp card and having a 24-pack of beer on the belt behind them.  Now, most people know you can’t use government benefits to buy alcohol, but they equate that to you taking clothes off your children’s backs to buy beer.  It’s unfair, but it’s true.

Now that I’ve said that, I have to admit that there are plenty of recipes that just aren’t the same with a quarter-cup of wine.   The important thank to remember about wine in cooking is that there is no longer any alcohol once it’s been cooked.  What remains is the flavor that the wine gives to the food.  That being said, there are plenty of ways to get around having to get a new bottle of wine every time you want to cook something.

The issue with bottles of wine is that they tend to sour into vinegar if you don’t use them in a timely manner.  Now, the typical bottle of wine is 750 mL.  For those of you who aren’t up on your metric system, that’s a little over 3 cups, or 25 oz.  Most recipes you’ll find ask for between ¼ and ½ of a cup of wine.  That leaves about 85% of the bottle left over to either drink or go bad.  Either way, it’s a waste of money that you may not have, so here are some solutions:

Personal-sized bottles:

Many vineyards are beginning to put out four-packs of individual-sized bottles of wine.  These are about 187 mL (3/4 cup) per bottle, and sometimes you can mix and match them to meet your needs.  That means for between $5 and $7 you can have four resealable wine bottles that can you don’t need to open until you have a recipe for them.  If you find a place that allows you to choose your wines, you can get two whites and two reds and not need to spend the money on two packages.

Resealable packages:

 As many vineyards as are producing individual-sized bottles have now created resealable wine.  These are often small bottles as mentioned above or in paper cartons that resemble large juice boxes. These have threaded tops like a water bottle that can be tightened down at any time.  The thing to mention is that any wine bottle that has a threaded top is technically resealable, but the larger the bottle, the sooner your wine will most likely go bad.  See, wine goes bad because it mixes with the air which screws up the chemistry of the wine.  To get a wine you intend to reseal, get a smaller carton or bottle and it will most likely last longer than a typical wine bottle.

Box wine:

Wine enthusiasts everywhere wince when they hear those two words together.  Box wine has become the cliché for tacky over the years, but it doesn’t have to be – especially when you’re just cooking with it.  Here’s the deal with box wine.  It isn’t just a box full of wine.  It’s a bag full of wine surrounded by a box with a spigot on the front.  The thing about the bag inside is that it doesn’t have air in it, so as you dispense wine from the bag, it just deflates a little more.  The vacuum-packed bag makes it so you can keep a box of wine for months without it going bad.  Also, in my experience, a box with 2 to 3 liters of wine costs about the same as a cheap 750 mL bottle of wine.  The only problem with this is you still run the risk of waste, and you might not want to buy more than one box of wine, seeing as some recipes call for white wine and some call for red.  If you want to buy just one type in a box, opt for a white zinfandel.  It’s a blush wine, so it can go in both types of dishes.  If you run across a recipe that absolutely needs a dark red (white is usually pretty well taken care of with blushes), go find a resealable or personal with that type.

Like many things in this blog, this is intended to help you personalize your kitchen.  Only you know how much you cook with wine, so only you know how much you need in your kitchen.  If you’re a regular wine cooker, get a box.  If you only use it once or twice a month, get a set of personal sized wine bottles.  It’s your kitchen, you decide.

One more thing:  If you are on government assistance and you're going to buy wine, do everyone a little favor and buy it separately.  I'm not saying make a separate trip, but just separate the purchases.  For example, maybe you go in and buy your box of wine, then take it back out to the car before you come back in and buy your food.  This just helps us combat the food stamp stereotype.  If you don't know what that is, count yourself lucky.

What luxury foods do you want to talk about? Comments? Questions? Tweet to @cookingcheap