Problems Cooking with Wine

Last night we made veal marsala and vesuvio potatoes for dinner and while it turned out very good, I noticed a problem I frequently have when cooking with wine. The wine flavor we were looking for was there but it there was also a bitter/sour component we really didn’t want.

Am I simply not reducing the wine enough? Am I using crap wine? I was almost tempted to add sugar to counter it but the marsala had more than enough sweetness.

What am I doing wrong?

What else was in the sauce besides wine?

Cooks Illustrated has a pretty good Marsala sauce that includes chicken stock, a little tomato paste and lemon juice. A lot of sauces will use a lot of butter to smooth the flavor fo the reduced wine.

The recipie was essentially 1 cup marsala, 1 cup beef stock, and 2 tablespoons butter.
The thing is I've had this happen before with other recipies with wine, it seems to be something I'm doing wrong in general.

With 3 ingredients, assuming that each tasted good separately, there should be no reason why they shouldn't taste good combined. Was the wine okay on its own?

The wine was fine on it's own. It's almost as is the tannins get concentrated and I end up with a bitter end result. Maybe I just need to use better wine

Sometimes, esp. with white-ish wines (marsala is on the edge here), a too-fast reduction will produce sulfur mercaptans and other Bad Things. (Cook's has a discussion of this, somewhere...) It's pretty evident how much better the sauce is when you do the reduction v e r y s l o w l y . PITA, but there you have it. Made all the difference in the world in my moules in white wine.

Geo

Very interesting Geo - I must admit I boil the hell out of my wine to reduce it,
Slow and low appears to be the key once again
I'll give it a try and report back.

One cup of wine seems excessive for a pan sauce.

What type of beef stock did you use? Have you tasted it on it's own?

I almost always finish these types of pan sauces by swirling in whole butter, which smoothes out the flavor and masks acidity.

The stock was fine. I seem to run into this problem frequently and I think it's my technique.
I think Geo is on to something.

Did you simmer the marsala on its own, first?

While I wouldn't doubt that slower reductions are better than faster ones, I can't see restaurants taking forever to reduce pan sauces, so they must have some other trick.

My other thought is that the wine might be over reduced, depending on how much sauce you end up with out of two cups of liquid.

leek wrote:Did you simmer the marsala on its own, first?

No, should I have? I followed the recipe;

Veal Marsala

Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2006

(snipped to relevant part to avoid any copyright issues)

1 cup Marsala
1 cup veal stock
2 shallot, chopped
2 teaspoons chopped garlic


Add the shallot and garlic. Saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add the mushrooms and season with salt.
Add the Marsala. Simmer until the Marsala reduces by half.
Add the veal stock and parsley. Simmer 1 more minute.

We you simmering or boiling? Simmering is (by definition) low and slow. You should barely see bubbles break the surface.

Hm. It is very easy for garlic and shallot to burn. If either is cooked too much it can give an acrid taste. Maybe your Marsala was off? (you did use Marsala, and not just any old wine, yes?)

Darren72 wrote:We you simmering or boiling? Simmering is (by definition) low and slow. You should barely see bubbles break the surface.

Yeah I boilled the hell out of it, I was in a bit of a hurry. I'm beginning to think that's my problem.

leek wrote:Hm. It is very easy for garlic and shallot to burn. If either is cooked too much it can give an acrid taste. Maybe your Marsala was off? (you did use Marsala, and not just any old wine, yes?)

Nope didn't burn anything. Brand new bottle of marsala, although it's not exactly a good bottle.

zoid,

What type of pan are you using?

Evil Ronnie wrote:zoid,

What type of pan are you using?

This particular time it was a large teflon skillet.

zoid,

I was going to suggest that perhaps an aluminum saute pan might be the culprit. I'll stick with my suspicion that your sauce contains too much wine for the amount of stock called for. I don't think the speed of the reduction is a real issue.

The "monte au buerre" trick would have fixed for you, though.

OK - I still have some veal (on sale $3.99/lb. at the Dominicks on Lake in Oak Park BTW) and I'm going to give it another shot soon.
I'll cut the wine by 1/2, simmer it slowly, and finish with cold butter.
Fingers crossed...

Offered FWIW: I was at a cooking demo a few months back, and during the Q&A session after, someone asked about the key to successful veal (or chicken) marsala. His response was to use lots of butter, and to cook "low and slow," as others have suggested, so as not to "break" the butter. If you try to hurry things up, he said, you end up with a dish that doesn't taste right.

Now, he did not give proportions for his version, so I don't know how much butter he meant, but in reviewing the recipe you posted, the method and butter quantity seems diametrically opposed to what this chef recommended (sorry, can't remember his name!).

So, I guess my suggestion would be to maybe search for additional recipes and settle on one (or adapt one) that suits.

Good luck, and let us know how your next version turns out!

His response was to use lots of butter, and to cook "low and slow," as others have suggested, so as not to "break" the butter. If you try to hurry things up, he said, you end up with a dish that doesn't taste right

The butter should usually be added at the end, after everything else is already reduced. That's different from the speed at which you reduce the wine. Some people add the butter after the heat is turned off.

I'd agree though, that the butter seems awfully low for the amount of liquid in the Emeril recipe- Looks like almost a cup and a half after reducing the wine.