Cooking wine substitutes

An ordinary bottle of dry white or red from the drinks aisle, matched to the colour the recipe calls for.

Best for

pan sauces, risotto, braises and stews, steaming shellfish

This is an upgrade rather than a compromise, and it is what nearly every recipe writer means anyway. Real wine tastes of fruit and has clean acidity, where cooking wine tastes flat, harsh and salty, and that harshness concentrates when you reduce it. The one thing you must not skip is putting the salt back: cooking wine carries roughly as much added salt as a light brine, so if you swap in real wine and season the dish exactly as written it will taste noticeably underseasoned. Add the salt at the end and taste, since a reduction concentrates it. A pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc or unoaked chardonnay covers white, and a merlot or dry red blend covers red.

A dry white wine fortified and flavoured with herbs and botanicals, which keeps for months in the fridge once opened.

Best for

chicken and mushroom sauces, cream sauces, small quantities, long shelf life

The best answer to the real reason people buy cooking wine, which is not wanting to open a whole bottle for two tablespoons. Because it is fortified, an opened bottle of dry vermouth stays good for two or three months in the fridge instead of three days. In cooking it behaves like a slightly richer, more aromatic dry white: you get the same acidity and alcohol, with an added herbal, faintly bitter note of wormwood and citrus peel that is a real asset in chicken, mushroom and cream sauces and an odd fit in something delicate like poached sole. Use a touch less if the dish is subtle, and remember it brings no salt of its own.

Chicken, vegetable or beef broth sharpened with acid, matched to the dish.

Best for

alcohol-free cooking, braises, gravies, pan sauces

The most practical alcohol-free swap, and a good one because you keep both the liquid volume and the acidity that made the wine useful. Since broth is already salted, add nothing extra and hold the recipe's salt back until you taste. What changes is the direction of the flavour: broth pushes the dish savoury, meaty and rounder, while wine pushes it bright and slightly fruity. Add the acid near the end, because a long simmer dulls it. Use white wine vinegar or lemon for white wine, and red wine vinegar or a splash of pomegranate juice for red.

Unsweetened grape juice with enough acid added to stop it tasting like a fruit drink.

Best for

glazes, fruit sauces, pork and poultry, cooking without alcohol

Better than broth when the dish is on the sweeter or more delicate side, such as a fruit pan sauce, a glazed pork chop or a poached pear, because you keep the grape character. The vinegar is not optional: grape juice on its own has three or four times the sugar of dry wine, and a sauce made without the acid tastes cloying and reduces to something sticky. Watch the pan more closely than usual, since the extra sugar means it will catch and caramelise well before wine would. White grape juice for white wine, and Concord or red grape juice for red.

Fortified or rice-based cooking wines chosen to match the cuisine of the dish.

Best for

stir-fries, mushroom dishes, Asian braises, gravies and soups

Match the wine to the food and these are often better than the cooking wine ever was. Dry sherry, which also keeps for weeks opened, gives a nutty savoury lift to mushrooms, onion soup, chicken livers and Chinese-style dishes. Shaoxing wine is the right answer for stir-fries, braises and dumpling fillings, bringing a distinctly aromatic, slightly caramelised savoury note. Sake is cleaner and more neutral and works in Japanese simmered dishes. One trap to avoid: the bottles labelled cooking sherry and cooking sake on the same supermarket shelf are salted exactly like cooking wine, so read the label and buy the drinking version if you can.

The reverse swap most people actually need, when the recipe calls for wine and cooking wine is what is in the cupboard.

Best for

braises and stews, deglazing, gravies, recipes with plenty of other flavour

It will work, with two conditions. First, cut the salt in the recipe by roughly half and season only at the end, because a half cup of cooking wine can carry as much salt as the entire dish needs. Second, do not reduce it to a glaze. Boiling a half cup down to a couple of tablespoons concentrates all that salt into the sauce and there is no way back from it. Taste the cooking wine straight from the bottle first, which tells you immediately how salty this particular one is. It also tastes harsher and less fruity than real wine, so a dish where the wine is the point, such as risotto, mussels or beurre blanc, will taste noticeably duller.