Hi all,

I recently came across a recipe that I wish to try for a lentil bolognese. I’m excited to try it as I’ve been trying to find a recipe I can use my red lentils with, but I’m curious about one thing both with this recipe, and recipes in general.

This recipe calls for the pan to be deglazed with red wine. This is something I’ve seen before in other recipes, though this recipe is the first of which I’m taking an interest in exploring. I’m personally fine with regular red wine, but my concern is that I have a friend who is incredibly cautious with alcohol, and says she’d refuse to eat things if they had alcoholic ingredients.

Putting aside my personal thoughts about that, I was curious if using a non-alcoholic wine would work just as well, or if the alcohol adds certain properties to the wine that make it function better as an ingredient or for deglazing. I’m mainly curious as I hope to invite friends over for dinner in the future, and want to make accommodations where possible, especially if it’s as easy as simply buying a slightly different ingredient.

Thanks in advance!

  • Lvxferre
    10•12 days ago

    Let me do some maths for a typical situation:

    The final alcohol content of the dish should be (125ml/2l)*(12%)*(0.25) ≃ 0.2%. For reference an over-ripen banana has twice as much alcohol as that.

    Is that such a big deal for your friend? (Don’t assume, ask her.) If it is not, just use wine.

    That said if it’s a big deal for her, I wouldn’t recommend non-alcoholic wine. It’s typically awful. Instead use good quality vinegar, as others suggested.

    • Pasta Dental
      3•12 days ago

      Wait I can get drunk on bananas? I knew they were radioactive or something but damn!! Well… In both cases one would probably die of banana over consumption before even starting to feel the symptoms of the radioactivity or alcohol contents but still

      • Lvxferre
        4•12 days ago

        Even if the banana is overripe (0.4% alcohol) it has ~1/10 the alcohol content of the same weight in your typical beer (4~5%).

        So… technically yes, but in practice no.

    • FuglyDuckEnglish
      3•12 days ago

      For the record, if the friend is concerned about relapsing, the mere taste might be enough to trigger cravings. We can argue about how many people can taste it or not. It’s a risk the friend is unwilling to take and that should be respected.

      And if it’s a religious restriction… it just gets weirder. It should still be respected…. Even if things seem odd.

      Generally when people say “no food cooked with Alcohol”, they mean it; even if they’re okay with foods that have some alcohol in them in trace amounts.