We all like wine, of course we do. Swirling it, drinking it, sharing it with friends and matching it with food … Which is what wanted to talk about! As well as enjoying a glass while cooking, we can also cook with wine. Today we’re going to write about how to make a red wine sauce that’s so tasty that you and your friends will be mopping up the last drops with bread. We’ll talk about other dishes to cook with red wine while we’re about it.
Put on your apron on, and … Let’s go!
Wine in your kitchen
Wine is a great cooking ingredient, as it adds flavour with its aromas, taste and colour. It also brings its own natural and health-enhancing qualities, such as polyphenols, whose antioxidant effect slows down the aging process of our body’s cells; melatonin, a protein that helps us get a good night’s sleep; and resveratrol, which boosts our energy levels, as well as plenty of others.
If there is one thing you have to know when cooking with red wine, it’s how to reduce wine to make a sauce. As a general rule, there are two main things to do with wine in the kitchen: marinating meat to soften it and add that special flavour before making a stew or cooking it some other way, or to make a sauce by reducing the wine.
Red wine is always a good choice for sauces to accompany red or white meat, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t reduce red wine to make a sauce that goes nicely with fish such as salmon or tuna.
Making a sauce by reducing red wine
Reducing red wine is straightforward, you just need a bit of patience, as with everything in life. You’ll need:
-A cup of red wine and three spoonfuls of sugar.
-Cook the wine at medium heat, stirring slowly (you can put on some background music to help the time pass), and wait until half of it has evaporated.
-Add the three spoonfuls of sugar and continue stirring.
-Reduce heat when the sauce begins to thicken. Turn off the heat and leave to rest. Voilà! Remember that you’re looking for a concentrated, almost gooey, sauce.
If you want to make a more elaborate sauce you can add a glass of meat or chicken stock at the start. Also, be sure to add a spoonful of the juices and fat from the meat.
Other recipes that include red wine
There are loads of recipes with red wine for you to make. We want to share two classics that are both tasty and easy to prepare.
Sirloin of pork with red wine sauce (yum!)
We’ll need:
-1 sirloin of pork
-½ an onion
-1 cup of red wine
-Clove
-Ground nutmeg
-Parsley
-½ lemon
-Olive oil
-Salt and pepper
Cut the sirloin into medallions of about 1 cm and add salt and pepper. Fry the medallions a minute each side until golden and remove from heat. In another frying pan gently fry the chopped onion until golden and add two pinches of clove and another two of nutmeg once the onion has softened. Add the red wine and mix everything together before adding to the pan where you fried the medallions. Let the wine reduce by half and then return the meat to the pan, leaving everything to cook for another couple of minutes.
Chocolate and red wine cake
We’re not going to send you to bed without dessert. Take a look at this beauty. To make it we’ll need:
-Pastry flour
-Sugar
-Cocoa powder
-Baking soda
-Salt
-Sunflower oil
-Vanillia essence
-Red wine
-Single or cooking cream
-Dark chocolate
Preheat the oven to 180 °C and prepare the cake mould you’ll be using by greased it with oil (or butter) and sprinkling with cocoa powder. In another receptacle, sift the flour along with cocoa powder, baking soda, coffee and salt. Add the sunflower oil, the red wine and the vanilla essence and mix everything gently together until it’s all the same consistency. Pour the mixture into the mould and put it in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Once you see that it’s ready, take it out and leave to cool.
For the icing, heat the cream together with the wine in a saucepan, adding the dark chocolate just before the mixture comes to the boil. Remove the pan from the heat and stir until you have a smooth cream, then allow to cool for about 20 minutes. Pour it over the cake, letting it drip down the sides.
Now it’s your turn. Get stuck in and when your sauce or any of the dishes is ready, don’t forget to share them with us via social media! We’re @bodegas_covinas.
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