Freezing Cream Cheese Dips
Browning Meat for Slow Cooker

Cooking Off Alcohol


Lots of recipes that use wine or spirits say to cook off the alcohol.  I have heard that not all of the alcohol is cooked off.  Is this true?

-- Bobbi

That's correct.  Depending on the cooking method, between 5% and maybe 75% of the alcohol that went into the dish is left behind.  But the question really is, how much actual alcohol is that?

Suppose you are making Boeuf en Daube, a classic beef stew from southern France, for company.  You might use a 750 ml bottle of wine with a 12% alcohol content and stew it for several hours to make a dish that would serve perhaps eight people. 

Dean & DeLuca

So you would have 750 ml X 5% of the initial alcohol left over for a long stew, which would be equivalent to 37.5 ml of wine at full strength, divided by 8 servings means that your dinner guests would consume the alcohol equivalent of about 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of wine each.

Now suppose that for dessert you served Bananas Foster.  The classic recipe calls for 1/4 cup each of banana liqueur and dark rum to serve four people.  A flambé can leave as much as 75% of the initial alcohol behind, so each serving would have about 1/2 fl. oz. of banana liqueur (50 proof) plus 1/2 fl. oz. dark rum (80 proof) X 75% which is equivalent to 3/4 fl. oz. of 65 proof spirits each, about the same as just giving everyone a straight 1 oz. shot of the banana liqueur.

Other cooking methods, like deglazing a pan to make a sauce, may leave between 10% and 50% of the original quantity of alcohol behind, depending on temperature and time.

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)