What's the difference between cooking wine and drinking wine?

I feel really stupid for asking this question, but I'm a new wine drinker. Does the bottle always specify when a wine is solely for cooking? Is the alcohol content different? Not planning on drinking cooking wine, obviously, I'm just curious.|||I'm a chef and I don't know of cooking wine with salt in it.


I know of spirits with salt and pepper for cooking, this has to do with taxes.





Most chefs use cheaper or young wines in cooking, because complexity of flavour of a nice wine is lost in the cooking process. Some non-expensive Italian wines are bottled in large 1.5 litre bottles and used mostly in cooking. These could be called cooking wines, but a person with an unsophisticated pallet could still find them drinkable.





Still there is much to be said about using a good wine in cooking the dish and drinking it with the end product. The harmony of flavour will be better. The cost on the other hand will be much greater.





Good question....|||i have been a chef for over 20 years and if i wouldn't drink it i wouldn't cook with it|||Relax. That is not a foolish question at all.





Cooking wine is usually a cheaper wine than a drinking wine. Cooking wine is added to a recipe to provide the flavor, the taste, of fermented grape without the alcohol. The alcohol will boil out, leaving behind a specific taste to the food. Some poultry will be enhanced with a sauterne, a sweeter white wine, or a dryer white wine. Beef can be enhanced with a burgundy (red). Dessert wines can be added to a sugar-sweet desert or pastry dish. Some wines just do not go well with some vegetables or meats. Others are wonderful. You either need a good recipe, or are willing to experiment.





Here is what one website has to say:





"Cooking wine or Cooking sherry refers to inexpensive grape wine or rice wine (in Chinese and other East Asian cuisine). It is intended for use as an ingredient in food rather than as a beverage. Cooking wine typically available in North America is treated with salt as a preservative and food colouring. When a wine bottle is opened and the wine is exposed to oxygen, a fermentative process will transform the alcohol into acetic acid resulting in wine vinegar. The salt in cooking wine inhibits the growth of the acetic acid producing microorganisms. This preservation is important because a bottle of cooking wine may be opened and used occasionally over a long period of time.





Cooking wines are convenient for cooks who use wine as an ingredient for cooking only rarely. However, they are not widely used by professional chefs, as they believe the added preservative significantly lowers the quality of the wine and resultantly the food made with that wine. Most professional chefs prefer to use inexpensive but drinkable wine for cooking, and this recommendation is given in many professional cooking textbooks as well as general cookbooks. Many chefs believe there is no excuse for using a low quality cooking wine for cooking when there are quality drinkable wines available at very low prices.





Cooking wine is considered a wine of such poor quality, that it is unpalatable by itself and intended for use only in cooking. There is a school of thought that advises against cooking with any wine one would find unacceptable to drink."|||Cooking wine has salt in it so it does not go bad after you open it. It is good if don't drink wine but want to cook with it every few months. In theroy it is drinkable. But in practice people only drink it becasue they can steal it from a grocery store easer than stealing anything from a liquor store, much like mouthwash.|||The cooking wines are always a little salty and really not good for cooking. They taste bad





A good chef cooks with a good wine.....buy wine you would drink.........I always use the best Chardonnay (white) or Merlot or Sauvignon (red) for my dishes.|||Cooking wine is not really that good, and has a lot of salt. Use a wine that you can drink. If you do not like it in the glass, you will not like it in the dish.


Go to a wine shop, tell them what you are serving, what you like in a wine and about how much you would like to spend.|||quality however if you ask any good Italian cook(like myself) and we all say you NEVER cook with a wine that you dont want to drink...This really did answer your question but cooking wine is just crap and shoudnt even be sold!|||When you cook wine, the alcohol boils out of it. The wine you choose to cook with may have different characteristics than the one you drink. For instance, I drink dry reds, but cook with Sauterne, which is a sweetish white.|||If you wouldnt drink it..........dont cook with it!!!!