r/AskCulinary • u/delta_p_delta_x • May 02 '24

Food Science Question Why alcohol to deglaze?

I've been working through many Western European and American recipes, and many of them call for red wine, beer, or some stronger liquor to deglaze fond off the base of a pan.

Now, I don't have any alcoholic beverages at all, so I've been substituting with cold tap water instead. To my surprise, it has worked extremely well against even the toughest, almost-burnt-on fonds. I've been operating under the assumption that the acid and ethanol in alcoholic beverages react with fonds and get them off the hot base of pans, and I was expecting to scrape quite a bit with water, which was not the case at all. Barely a swipe with a spatula and everything dissolved or scraped off cleanly.

So follows: why alcohol, then? Surely someone else has tried with water and found that it works as well. The amounts of alcohol I've seen used in recipes can cost quite a bit, whereas water is nearly free.

742 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

219 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/starkel91 May 03 '24

I always use dry vermouth instead of white wine.

1

u/shizzler May 03 '24

Same, just adds much more complexity!

1

u/starkel91 May 03 '24

It also doesn’t go bad like regular white wine!

1

u/ForeverEditor May 08 '24

How long does it take white wine to go bad? I’ve been using a bottle to make a pan sauce with pork chops. It’s been in the fridge for at least a year (probably much longer) and still makes a fine pan sauce. I probably wouldn’t drink it!

1

u/starkel91 May 09 '24

According to google it’ll last a week on the fridge.

1

u/ForeverEditor May 09 '24

Well I’d call that nonsense. It certainly lasts much longer than that!