We just got a second wine fridge last week - I decided that we needed separate ones for white and red wines, but they only hold six bottles each. I need to get some more wine stoppers because we never finish a bottle at one time, since there are only two of us. I love your liquor cabinet, but it is pretty small. Ours is much larger but mostly empty. I have a lot more liqueurs than anything else, and I use those frequently for flavoring, but most for desserts. My favorite recipe is ice cream plus Frangelico. I use Cognac in my French toast recipe, and I've posted that before. When I saute mushrooms, I frequently deglaze the pan with white wine (Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay), but other than that, I do not cook with booze very much. I use Mirin in some Japanese recipes, however, but not that much.

I can understand having 4 full wine racks, as it is nice to have a selection to choose from, but I am not that knowledgeable on wine, although I am trying to learn. I have the book The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine but I have not used it much.

I love beer braises, and I also put beer in the beans. :) The only way I'll touch vermouth is for cooking. :) The only brandy I have is on the same shelf in the spice rack as the vanilla extract. :) Lots of smilies here. I drink rarely, but I always put a bottle of white wine over a turkey and liqueurs are great in everything from sauces to bread pudding. One of my signature dishes is a pasta with a marsala cheese sauce. I rarely make it anymore because it's too rich, but it's oh, so good. Something I never ever eat (not since my 20's) but can highly recommend (Lars reminded me) is fudge ripple ice cream topped with a generous slug of Kahlua.

One of my favorites is also one of the first recipes I ever posted here as I recall. Emeril's Drunken Shrimp. It's got Scotch and ginger wine in it. Ginger wine isn't the most common thing to find, but the liquor store was kind enough to order a case last year when I asked, even though I only bought one bottle. Now that you've got me thinking about it, I'm toying with using the sauce with some Elk that I've had in my freezer for far too long. Time to see if they'll order it for me again.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/drunken-shrimp-recipe.html

There's a lot in the liquor cabinet that's been there for years untouched. If a recipe calls for white wine I typically use dry vermouth. Use marsala in chicken/pork marsala and tiramisu. Use brandy & dry sherry in Ina's Onion and Fennel Soup Gratin. Kahlua in mocha latte ice cream.

I have a drink almost every evening...usually Scotch or gin which I never use in cooking.
I have a big pot of pumpkin soup on the stove to take to a party this evening....and I just poured about 2/3 of a cup of sherry into it....it's about 1 1/2 gallons of soup!

I usually dump half a bottle of a dry red into a beef stew and often on a pot roast....sometimes though I use Guiness.

The Risotto always starts with the rice browned in a little butter or oli and then a big glug of white wine....it's particularly good if you have a left over bottle of champagne.
When pan sauteeing most things that will get sauced, I deglaze with wine. And then there's those steak variations with the flaming brandy...

and then there are all the liquors that get added to things like fruit toppings for a tart, like Apricot brandy and peach brandy and Frangelico with a chocolate sauce.

But I don't usually drink the booze I cook with....with the exception of the wines....and perhaps the brandy.

Kahula will make chocolate brownies much better. I use white wine frequently when making a white pasta sauce and always when making risotto. My "award winning" chili recipe uses dark beer, either porter or stout. Beef stew usually gets a fair amount of red wine. And, of course there is Coq au Vin . A favorite, go-to addition to make sauces or soups better is medium-dry Madeira,. In my opinion Madeira is what sherry was trying to emulate, but sherry missed the mark.

I'm certain that I don't use nearly enough booze in my cooking. I do reach for the dry sherry or white wine for several dishes (risotto, spezzatino, some soups, etc).

I think of desserts for times when booze can play a larger role... my Dad loved to make a black forest cake with grand marnier, I make several different cakes with rum, truffles with amaretto or kahlua, grasshopper pie (loaded), etc. A really easy and elegant dessert is a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a pretty glass with a shot of creme de menthe on top. :O)

The most alcohol I use in cooking is in Julia Child's French Onion Soup. If you add the Cognac at the end, it will have quite a kick.

I knew you all would support my point with lots of recipes and ideas that there is a place for all kinds of booze in the kitchen. I will go back over this thread to further my list of boozy recipes.

I have to confess that I had a beer once. When I was dating the HG he gave me a beer. Being inexperienced I chugged it down, passed out, and he didn't...well enough of that.

Cathy, you still did better than I do with beer. I drink one and get sick way before I could ever pass out...

Dad used to tell me that if I had one drink I could feel it, two drinks and ANYONE could feel it. (grin)

Sorry, I don't have any recipes for you, although I do mix food coloring with a little vodka for cake paint. I bought one of those little airline sized bottles of vodka just for that purpose, and I've had it 5 or 6 years now. I don't do a lot of cake painting, LOL. I did try the Cook's Illustrated pie crust with vodka but it didn't turn out well for me, I found it difficult to handle.

Annie

I like to add bourbon to holiday pies & cookies = )

I "booze-it-up" when I do some of our favorite traditional Irish breads/cakes/meat for a St. Patrick's Day Hooley (party). I purchase one can of Guinness and use 1/2 c. in Porter Cake, and 1 cup for Spiced Beef. One sample-size bottle of Irish Mist Whiskey and use 1/4 c. in none other than Irish Whiskey Cake. Then I'll throw caution to the wind (being non-drinkers) and I'll soak the currants, dark brown sugar and strong brewed tea with 2 T. of spiced rum in the mixture (also purchased in a sample-size bottle) for Tea Brack.

The only other times I've had bottles of alcohol in our home were when I made several bottles of homemade vanilla with vanilla beans; and when I harvested my stevia plant and made stevia extract with vodka. (Hick-up!)

-Grainlady

Fun topic!

I often use red wine or dark beer in meat based sauces and reductions, also in stews. White wine in some seafood recipes. Sometimes liqueurs in sauces, and there is the tasty recipe for Amaretto green beans. Japanese sweet rice wine (mirin) is a common ingredient in Japanese dishes, with sake occasionally used, and Chinese rice wine (e.g. Shaoxing) is used in, well, Chinese dishes. I don't use whiskey or cognac often, but probably should try.

I am reminded of being about 10 years old and making cherries jubilee flambeed with brandy.... except my brandy wouldn't light so I added more... still wouldn't light, so more... by the time I ate the jubilee it was so loaded with brandy (and the hint of burnt matches taste) that I haven't cared for brandy since. lol!

Harvey Wallbanger Cake.

I made Ball's Heavenly Fig Jam (Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving). It recommends adding 1/3 cup orange flavored liqueur. So I bought Grand Marnier. Now I'm wondering what to do with the rest of the bottle! It's way to strong for me. I think I need to add it as an extract when making cookies and breads.

I Love Grammercy's (sp?) Stout Ginger Bread, and make it every year at Christmas time. I'll have to look for the recipe later, as I have to rush, and it's not on my computer.

Sally

Boo, there was another canning recipe that called for Grand Marnier, I'll try to remember. It was too rich for my blood and I wasn't spending that kind of money to make jam, so I just bought Triple Sec instead. I did eventually just pour the remainder of the bottle down the drain, as it appeared to be good for nothing else.

Annie

Triple Sec is good in Margaritas. ;)

Grand mariner is lovely!!...try a tablespoon of it over crushed ice....yummy...or a splash in a chocolate ganache.
Or in a cake like this...
http://southernfood.about.com/od/lemoncakes/r/bl40621v.htm

Annie Deighnaugh

"Harvey Wallbanger Cake."

Yes, love Galliano! My mom made the best Harvey Wallbanger cake in the crock pot. I've yet to perfect it as she did.

I mostly cook with wine (fortified, too), but also use cognac and brandy and of course beer.

This past weekend, I braised a brisket and used a nice Pinot Noir.

There's just no replicating the depth/background/brightness.dimension that booze brings to food!

FWIW, Grand Marnier can be used in sangria as well...

Vodka sauce hasn't been mentioned. Great stuff. I agree with many already posted!

Rob, you're right! Love it too! Only reason I keep a bottle of vodka on hand.

A little bit of Grand Marnier is good in coffee. By the way, a lot of recipes will call for a bit of brandy. You certainly don't want to shell out good $$$ for Courvoisier or Remy Martin for something that will end up in a dish. I find the best tasting inexpensive brandy is Raynal. Mid price, but good enough to drink on its own.

I have a blueberry crisp recipe that has a crumble on top containing oats, butter, honey, a little cinnamon, and some Grand Marnier. For those of you who have trouble getting rid of it! I like a sip on a cold evening once in a while, too...

Grand Marnier is great in dessert sauces. Make a orange, or orange-chocolate, sauce for crêpes, for instance. My father gave me half a bottle when I was in college. Something had happened to the cork. It was fine other than for beautiful pouring, so I used a lot of it in cooking over a decade. :) I seem to remember it did beautifully in eggs.

BTW, about cooking with wine. All the TV chefs talk about using the same quality of wine you'll drink. That's silly. It's one thing if you're developing a particular flavor of a particular wine to pair with a particular wine that is being served with the dish to which it has lent the particular flavor. For roasts and braises, palatability is very important, but quality is not. Two Buck Chuck, which is a blend of wine lake that ranges between good and very good in flavor, even though it now costs $2.49 at Trader Joe's (up from $1.99), is perfectly good on the meat. I'll use a much better wine if I'm making a proper reduction with stock and all, where the sauce is the star, but for ordinary drippings gravy the two buck Charles Shaw is just fine. For making a red wine reduction, I often want a better wine than the table wine. My friends and family are just fine with drinking $10-15 wines (California prices--they'd be $45 in some states) and can't even tell the difference when given something better. In the sauce, however, because it's concentrated, better wine makes a much better reduction.

Beer and ale are also really good in baking. Any kind of batter, and also in breads.

Re liquor, one of the best things is hard sauce!

I think the reason TV chefs say that is to steer people away from nasty cooking wines.

The only time I buy 2 Buck Chuck is if I need a red for cooking. Don't care to drink them.

Sunday I was doing some wine tasting/testing, and so I had Kevin taste Trader Joe's 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon vs Clos Du Bois 2009 CS, and he chose the TJ version, even though he says he does not like it (when not doing a blind taste test). It's no longer $2, but still extremely cheap for what you get, and it is drinkable. I found the two wines to be almost equal, with the exception that the TJ wine was smoother, which was a surprise. We also like fairly inexpensive Pinot Noirs - we bought two bottles for $8 and $9 each (supposed marked down from $14 and $16), and they were perfectly fine. I can drink fairly cheap Sauvignon Blanc (although I use it mainly for cooking - deglazing, and sauces), but I can very much tell the difference in Chardonnays. I love expensive Chardonnay and can't stand cheap ones, but that is the only wine that I feel so strongly about. For Chianti, the $11 - $15 bottles taste the same to me, and so I buy the $11 bottles. I rarely use reds in cooking, but I do add it to pasta sauce, depending on how I am using the sauce.

Patrón makes an orange liqueur (Patron Citronge) that I like better than Grand Marnier for making Margaritas. In the past I have used Cointreau when making them for myself and Triple Sec when I have parties. I cannot tell much difference between Cointreau and Grand Marnier, and I like the Cointreau bottle better, but Patron Citronge seems better for Margaritas, as it has a faint tequila flavor. I do not make Margaritas very often because I like them too much.

Lars, if by TJ's you mean Charles Shaw, yes, it should be smoother. That's what they blend it for. Palatability. Which generally mean as close as possible to grape juice. :) That's what I don't like about Two Buck Chuck, but what makes it so great for cooking. Agreed about the Chardonnays. The better ones are generally expensive. Chardonnay isn't great for cooking. I'll put the ends in a sangria. Great for that. OTOH, I was in a grocery store in the midwest a long time ago, looking for a bottle of wine for entertaining in my room, and thought the Kendall Jackson Chardonnay looked like a winner until I saw the price. It was like three times the price as at home, and I said not without a sommelier! I bought what they had on advertised special (probably a loss leader).

Above, where I said "Pinot Noir" I meant "Pinot Grigio"! That shows you how much I know about wine. I seldom drink Pinot Noir, but I really like Pino Grigio. Cannot edit the above because that is my work account.

I did mean Charles Shaw, but I would never compare it to grape juice, at least the ones I've had so far, but maybe I've been lucky. I realize that they have done unconventional things to make it taste better, but I would say that they have succeeded. I am not a fan of Cabernet, as I generally prefer white wines, and in that category, I am not as impressed with Charles Shaw.

I had a very good Chardonnay from New York about 20 years ago, and for some reason I thought it was Inglenook, but I believe that is in Sonoma. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the Chardonnay was from NY - I bought it at Thrifty's Drug Store when I lived in Culver City around 1991. I liked it so much that I bought another bottle, making sure that I got the same vintage, but when I went back for a third bottle (a few weeks later), it was no longer available, and so I tried a different vintage, which was quite a bit cheaper, but tasted nothing like the first one. That made me think that pricing might be related to quality in Chardonnays. I do not use Chardonnay in cooking either because the ones I like are too expensive, and I find the Sauvignon Blanc does very well in cooking and costs a lot less.

Instead of cooking with wine, I am currently more interested in finding out which wine to drink with which food. Kevin and I are planning to have a wine pairing party this fall, and that will take a lot of experimentation before we can decide what to serve/offer. I will try to get a friend who has more experience with this to help us. She brought some very nice wine to our last party.

You drink the wine with the food that in your opinion works best.

Sometimes wineries and stores will send someone to run a tasting at a party, if you'd be interested in that. A pairing party sounds a lot more fun than a tasting. I find that three in a row is my limit for tasting. After that my taste buds are confused beyond what a cracker will fix. I think tasting with food and evaluating the pairings would engage far more neurons. :)

Re Charles Shaw, from what I've read, it's just a blend. They probably manipulate the sugars as well, but the reason it's so cheap is that they buy otherwise unspoken for wine grapes/juice and blend them. That's also why it's so different from lot to lot. If you pick up one you like, if you want more, hightail it back to the same store where you bought it and ask for the same case code--or so the wine guy at TJ's told me. :)

My favorite is the Irish Cream Fudge.

Just in case you are ever tempted to buy 'cooking wine', don't. All that is, is some cheap wine to which has been added a ton of salt to render it undrinkable. By doing so the producer doesn't have to pay the alcohol tax that a vinter or brewer or distiller would be subject.

I used to drink Vodka, now I make vanilla, so now if a bottle comes in the house to be drunk it will get vanilla beans stuck in it pretty fast. I do like Black Russians, and Christy will drink a White Russian so we have several bottles of Kahlua around. Pretty sure it's been six or seven years since I drank any though. I used to like Champagne then preferred Proseco, so now I have a bottle or two of each around. Christy will drink a Tom Collins when she has work dinners/meetings so now we have 4 or 5 bottles of good Gin she's gotten for Xmas the past few years. I have a couple bottles of Grand Marnier, 1 we bought and one or two that other people gave me who thought the chef could use it since it was languishing in their cabinet. .....I do have a few bottles I use for flavoring..Annisette, etc.

I was taught 45+ yrs ago to use all wine in my Beef Bourginon and I love it like that so once in a while I'll buy a half gallon of Burgundy and make a big batch.

But basically, no actual alcohol consumption for years at a time. Somebody gave us a bottle of Kahlua Rum. I hate rum..anybody want it??

I use Gran Marnier in baking from time to time. There's a few specific recipes I've made, but for the life of me, I don't remember what they are. I'm sure chocolate was involved.

Sally

I make vanilla too so add vodka to my list. I made a lot from the beans I brought back from Mexico; I give bottles of vanilla as gifts.

Kahlua Rum would be great in brownies.

I'm going to have a Broads Boozy Brunch for some friends; I'll use beer, wine, liquor, liqueurs in every dish. But I will serve iced tea to drink :). Thanks for your ideas.

I just have to say it, and I know you won't mind mustangs, it is so good to see coconut! I've missed you. Tell Christy hey from Robin.

Probably because I've been reading this thread, I somehow stumbled onto a recipe for DIY creme de menthe the other day. I'm excited to find another use for my mint and I have a batch steeping now. :)

I've made my own limoncello for years -- one of these days I'll remember to try some recipes that use it in desserts. Everyone always seems to love it! If anyone has a great dessert recipe that uses limoncello, plmk! (which reminds me that I love kahlua in a tiramisu :)

This thread actually inspired a dream last night! That I found a small patiala bottle of Grand Marnier in the back of my liquor cabinet and decided I had to cook with it. I just checked, no such luck, but maybe it's a sign.

Perhaps a roast chicken with Grand Marnier sauce FOAS? Or by my typical standards, a duck with said sauce? hm?

Duck L'Orange.

I also adore Sherry with crab soup/bisque.

I'd say a trip to the liquor store is in order....or maybe a different before bed routine.

Liquor store might be out of business, I quit drinking for Lent and still haven't had a drop.

Oh my...you would think we had a drinking problem if you saw our cabinet and wine racks. I love to use a good red wine in tomato sauces and some braising recipes. Every holiday season I make my fruit (ahem) RUM cakes, and brandied cherries for parties. I have a few canning recipes that call for either wine or liqueur. Beer for chili, white wine for cream-based pasta sauces or mussels/seafood, vodka for homemade vanilla extract, etc., I guess I do cook regularly with alcohol.

Some alcohol we rarely use, but when you need it, you need it.

Party, I use THIS RECIPE to make a decadent limoncello 'tiramisu' ' I've also made limoncello cakes, frosting, sorbet, and other things.

To be honest, I save my homemade limoncello for drinking straight, and use the liquor store stuff for cooking. ;-)

FOAS, Elery quit drinking too, so I'm surprised the wine industry in Michigan didn't go under. I never did drink, and now he doesn't, so I don't even use alcohol when I cook.

Annie

Deborah Madison has a very good rhubarb custard tart that you brush a little Grand Marnier on the top after pulling it out of the oven. A bit of Grand Marnier is also good in tea.

I guess this winter I will have to try making my own limoncello. I have put amaretto in apricot jam. I am eyeing some different liquers at Total Wine, I just have a hard time ponying up the money for it. I do love beer in beans (borracho), it adds a great element. My MIL boils ribs in beer before grilling them. They taste great but I am too cheap to do that. There is a ginger liquer that I really want to try soon. We have kirsch for black forest cake. When DH was supposed to get the kirsch, he got Maraschino liquer intead, that went into some homemade maraschino cherries and those are fabulous. Dried chipotle peppers were steeped in the syrup before canning, yum, yum.

I have never had a margarita. I had planned on making some this summer but summer is almost over. Maybe next year.

A question to the poster who mentioned Madeira. Would Rainwater be okay to cook with? DH really likes the 10 year Madeira but it is difficult to find and with the cost of it, there is no way I am putting a bunch of it in a sauce, no matter how special the dinner is.