Old bottle of white wine

Crubeens

I opened a bottle of white wine about two months ago and as I'm not a big fan, only drank about a third and its been sitting in the fridge ever since.

I went to pour it down the sink yesterday, but stopped just in time thinking that there might be a few recipies I could use it in.

Advice and expertise needed - have a heart and save that poor bottle of wine from the drain!

The Sweeper

Okay - there are different schools of thought on this.

One school says: taste the wine. If it tastes all right (have a proper taste), use it in cooking.

Another school says: it's been open two months, throw it away end of story.

A third school says: do you want to waste a bunch of perfectly good ingredients by adding something horrible to them?


I like using white wine in a poule a pot. Take a whole chicken, a couple of rashers of bacon, some carrots, turnip, shallots and mushrooms, half a pint of good chicken stock and three quarters of a pint of white wine, a bayleaf, thyme and parsley. You'll also need a hob-to-oven casserole dish.

Peel the shallots and cut all the veggies, except the mushrooms, to a similar size. Chop the bacon. Put the casserole on the hob, heat some oil. Fry off onions and bacon, remove from the pan and set aside. Add a little more oil. Holding the chicken by the legs, brown it on all sides in the hot oil. This will take about ten minutes.

Now remove it and set it aside. Turn down heat under pan. Place carrots and turnips into the oil and cook until they start to soften. Add onion and bacon back to pot. Add bayleaves, season well with salt and pepper. Now push the veggies to the edges of the pot, and place the chicken back in the centre. Add stock and white wine. Add thyme and parsley. Bring to a simmer.

Now, cover the chicken with a piece of tinfoil and place pot into the oven, pre-heated to 200 degrees, for 30 minutes. At the end of 30 minutes, add the mushrooms to the pot (whole if button, halved if bigger, sliced if field) and baste the chicken. Pull the chicken upwards in the pot so it's higher out of the liquid. Return to the oven at 190 degrees for 40 more minutes. The chicken will brown nicely in this time.

Remove pot from oven. Transfer chicken to a warmed serving dish and surround will vegetables - you need to remove everything from the pot with a slotted spoon, retaining the liquid but making sure the chicken and vegetables are all very well drained. Make sure to empty liquid out of the cavity of the chicken.

Now place the pot full of whitewine-stock liquid over a high heat. Blend 1tbsp room-temperature butter with 1tbsp of plain flour. Whisk this into the simmering stock mixture and it will thicken into a glossy sauce. Taste for seasoning, then serve carved chicken and vegetables on warm plates smothered in the sauce.

Alun

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

Blend 1tbsp room-temperature with 1tbsp of plain flour.

Think you need some butter in that sentence somewhere

Shabadu

What I do with my old red wine is leave it sitting out covered in a cloth to attract some vinegar bacteria. I then throw it in a pan and reduce the bejaysus out of it. It's dynamite in salad dressings.

Tazz T

There's rarely any leftovers in our wine cupboard, but normally I would freeze it by day 3. I'd be very surprised if yours could be salvaged.

Blub2k4

I had some red wine that went a step further than ethanoic acid (vinegar) and went all the way to being a ketone, like acetone :O (is it ethanone?)
I opened the bottle and was amazed that I could smell nail varnish remover, be careful with the old wine that it is not gone too far, you will know.

The Sweeper

Alun wrote:

Think you need some butter in that sentence somewhere

oops! edited for accuracy, anyone blending a tablespoon of flour with nothing and then dropping it into a simmering sauce will get lumpy loveliness...

Shabadu

Blub2k4 wrote:

I had some red wine that went a step further than ethanoic acid (vinegar) and went all the way to being a ketone, like acetone :O (is it ethanone?)
I opened the bottle and was amazed that I could smell nail varnish remover, be careful with the old wine that it is not gone too far, you will know.

Jaysus! Blindness ahoy

boneless

Shabadu wrote:

Jaysus! Blindness ahoy