PigLick on 28/6/2010 at 01:41

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thats pretty interesting, i was always taught that alcohol evaporated after only a small amount of high temp cooking.

Scots, not a lot of love for asian styles?

Rug Burn Junky on 28/6/2010 at 02:39

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Take that site's conclusion with a huge grain of salt, as it seems that they're somewhat pulling things out of their ass to come up with a "shocking" conclusion. They're retards who were underestimating how long it takes to remove alcohol completely in the first place, so of course they're going to come to a surprising conclusion when confronted by reality.

The key phrase is "high temp," as none of the methods they're showing are in fact high temp.

Plus their results are all sorts of inconclusive, misleading and badly presented: they don't account for how much alcohol they start with (if you start with everclear and flame it off you're going to lose a much higher percentage than if you start with cooking wine - alcohol stops burning off when it reaches a low enough proof, so that's going to be a different percentage retained), they don't tell you what temp they're simmering at, they don't tell you what else it was mixed with (heat transfer is obviously affected by what's in the sauce - is it just liquid or is there a cold chicken that needs to cook through as well?).

The fact is, yes, of course, if you don't cook it off enough, it's perfectly possible to leave alcohol in the sauce. But that's not an issue for almost any recipe involving wine. If your sauce is bubbling for more than 20 minutes, I assure you, there ain't even enough alcohol in it to get a practicing mormon in trouble. If that bothers you, then avoid all baked goods because the teaspoon of vanilla has a hell of a lot more alcohol than what's left in your chicken dish.

Try this as proof (I've done exactly this myself): make a reduction, and use low heat and a candy thermometer. Because of the alcohol, it will begin to "boil" at a temp lower than 212. once it does, adjust your stove top so that the temp remains as constant as possible but continues to boil. If you've got fine enough control on your stove, it will continue boiling for a time. But then it will stop bubbling and the temp will start to rise - at this point the alcohol is g o n e gone. This process will take much less than 45 minutes, and likely even less than a half an hour. (bonus points if you test whether it's still evaporating alcohol by standing over it and getting drunk on the fumes)

So yes, it is certainly possible to cook with alcohol and leave some behind. It's also quite easy to get rid of it completely - and it doesn't take 3 hours to do it.

PigLick on 28/6/2010 at 04:01

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thanks for that RBJ, I tend to accept things at face value without really reading into it far too often.
Scots, you should try some Japanese Yoshuku(western) style cooking. Very simple, yet takes a lot of practice to get it to taste right. If you have soy sauce, mirin, miso paste and dashii stock you can pretty much make any japanese dish. For example my kids favorite at the moment is a cup of miso soup followed by either chicken katsu or donburi. (katsu is a crumbed fried dish, while donburi is a salty, soupy stew with meat and onions, with an egg cooked over it at the last moment, absolutely delicious)

Chimpy Chompy on 28/6/2010 at 15:50

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Have to admit threads like this make me feel like a complete pleb, with all the fine eating people do handwaved with an "oh it was 20 minutes".

I do like cooking sometimes, by which I mean getting a recipie out of a Jamie Oliver book. And I always burn the damn onion. And I'm buggered if I know the right time to add the lime juice or can tell the difference it makes.

ZylonBane on 29/6/2010 at 20:21

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Recipe??

1. Buy wontons
2. Fry