What can you do with leftover wine in cooking?

The half-bottle on the counter after a dinner is a small domestic dilemma. Nobody wants to pour it down the sink, nobody wants to drink it on Wednesday when it has gone flat and a bit vinegary. The kitchen is the obvious answer. Wine brings acidity, fruit and depth to a dish, and it does most of its best work in small amounts.

The one rule

Cook with wine you would be willing to drink. Not expensive wine, just sound wine. Cooking concentrates whatever is there, good or bad, so a wine that has turned sharp and vinegary will make the dish sharp and vinegary. If it smells off, it is vinegar now, and that is a different ingredient.

Deglazing: the quickest use

After you have browned onions, mushrooms or anything that leaves a golden crust on the bottom of the pan, pour in a splash of wine while the pan is hot. It sizzles, and as you scrape with a wooden spoon, all those browned bits dissolve into a quick sauce. Let it bubble until it has reduced and lost its raw, boozy smell, then add butter, stock or cream. More on the technique in what deglazing means.

Risotto

A classic job for dry white wine. After you have softened the onion and toasted the rice in the fat until it turns translucent at the edges, add a glass of wine and stir until it has almost evaporated, before the first ladle of stock. It adds a gentle acidity that keeps the finished risotto from tasting heavy. Red wine works too, for a deep purple risotto with radicchio or mushrooms. On the stirring question, see our risotto page.

Braises and stews

Wine and slow cooking go together.

• Mushrooms braised in red wine with thyme and garlic, then finished with butter, are excellent on polenta or toast.
• Onions cooked down slowly with a splash of red wine turn jammy and dark.
• Beans and lentils simmered with a glass of red, a bay leaf and tomato taste richer and rounder.
• Fennel, leeks or celery braised in white wine and olive oil until tender and sweet.
• Tomato sauces for long cooking can take a splash of red early on, simmered off before the tomatoes go in.

Add wine early, so it has time to cook down. Wine added at the end of a long braise can taste raw and sour.

Poached and macerated fruit

Red wine and fruit are old friends.

• Poached pears: peel firm pears, simmer them gently in red wine with sugar, a strip of orange peel, a cinnamon stick and a clove, until tender to the point of a knife. Reduce the liquid to a syrup.
• Plums, figs or cherries in the same syrup, cooked more briefly.
• Strawberries or peaches sliced and left to sit in a little sweetened red or white wine for a while: a summer dessert in its simplest form. See macerating fruit.

Sweet dessert wines, such as Marsala or a passito, are lovely splashed over fruit or used in a quick zabaione-style sauce.

Which wine for which job

• Dry white (crisp, unoaked): risotto, white wine sauces, braised fennel or leeks, deglazing for butter sauces.
• Red (medium-bodied, not too oaky or tannic): mushroom ragù, bean stews, onions, poached pears.
• Rosé: anywhere you'd use white, with a little more fruit.
• Sparkling: it loses its bubbles in cooking, so treat it as a dry white. Prosecco works in risotto.
• Fortified wines (Marsala, sherry, port): small amounts in sauces, gravy or desserts.

Heavily oaked or very tannic reds can turn bitter when reduced. Sweet wines in savoury dishes need care.

Freezing leftover wine

The tidiest solution. Pour leftover wine into ice-cube trays or small tubs, freeze, then pop the cubes into a labelled bag. Drop a cube or two straight into a pan when a recipe calls for a splash. It is not for drinking any more, but for cooking it is perfectly good.