Logging alcohol used in cooking ?

abelthephotographer
abelthephotographer Posts: 127 Member
edited February 2 in Food and Nutrition
Hi all, does anyone make any allowances when logging alcohol used in cooking? Presumably when you cook off red wine a lot of the calories are lost by way of the alcohol evaporating.

Or am I being overly-optimistic? :)

TIA

Replies

  • micheleb15
    micheleb15 Posts: 1,418 Member
    Overly optimistic. :) The alcohol burns away but you still keep most of the sugar from the wine.
  • Pearsquared
    Pearsquared Posts: 1,656 Member
    Pretty much the only thing that cooks away in the wine is the water, unfortunately! The calories will be the same, but it's just in the food now.
  • abelthephotographer
    abelthephotographer Posts: 127 Member
    Good to know, thanks :)
  • tim_anderson
    tim_anderson Posts: 4 Member
    Most of the calories in wine & spirits comes from the alcohol itself (ethanol). The vast majority of that should be cooked away, assuming you are preparing the dish over heat.

    Alcohol should have about 7 calories per gram. Assuming you know the alcohol percent (~13% by volume?) and you know how much wine you add, you should be able to determine the volume of alcohol that went into your recipe. If you assume a density of 1 g/mL (which is water, not wine but probably sufficient enough to ballpark this stuff) then you can figure out how many grams of alcohol you added. Multiply that by 7 calories/gram and then you should know how many calories were burned away. Subtract that from whatever calories are in wine. In reality, though, you will never burn off 100% of the alcohol, but maybe like 90% so you could add that back in as a fudge number.

    The other option is finding out how many carbs are in wine per serving then multiplying by servings followed by the rule of thumb of ~4 calories per carb.

    Again, most of the calories are from alcohol and while there is sugar in the wine it probably shouldn't be mind-blowingly high. After all, most sugar is converted to alcohol in fermentation.
  • abelthephotographer
    abelthephotographer Posts: 127 Member
    Wow, thanks for that detailed rely, Tim!
  • dbmata
    dbmata Posts: 12,950 Member
    Pretty much the only thing that cooks away in the wine is the water, unfortunately! The calories will be the same, but it's just in the food now.

    No.

    You mean to say water and ethanol. Leaving a small amount of residual sugars and grape solids.
  • abelthephotographer
    abelthephotographer Posts: 127 Member
    I'd figured, trying desperately to remember my school science and trips to distilleries, that alcohol had a lower boiling point than water, and hence decided that it was highly calorific steam rising from my dinner :)
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
    Some alcohol, in fact surprisingly more than you'd think, remains in the food. Consider the table at http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blalcohol12.htm

    Unless you are making commercial amounts of food with lots of alcohol that you are cooking for a long time and are willing to do the weighing and the math necessary to get a good estimate, I'd just count in all the calories and chalk it up to measuring error. You probably have other measuring errors in your ingredients since all calorie counts are averages/estimates and all our kitchen measurements are, too, to one degree or another.
  • tim_anderson
    tim_anderson Posts: 4 Member
    I was thinking a bit more about this and wanted to be certain that you took into consideration the cooking method you are using. If you are doing something such as deglazing, reduction sauce, stir-fry or other high heat cooking methods, then chances are you would indeed evaporate off a vast majority of the alcohol. Again, not 100% but most.

    However, if you are adding red wine to a stew, soup, chili or other recipes that may be cooking at a simmer, then chances are you will be retaining a significant portion of the alcohol. Some will be lost, of course, but I would hesitate in making any claims that a majority of it would evaporate. Ditto for things like cakes or baked good which may include alcohol. My recommendation in that case, would be just to use the nutritional information of the product as-is.

    EDIT: Leaving what I mentioned above for transparency, but please note the chart that somebody else linked. Something else to think about, though, is if the dish will be cooked covered or uncovered. The chart doesn't seem to note the difference, but a cover would allow the alcohol to condense back into the dish, uncovered would allow it to freely evaporate.

    If it is worth anything, I have been a chemist for approximately ten years. Granted my field is NOT in food chemistry (full disclosure, yo), but rather in mass spectrometry. I used to blow apart molecules with beams of electrons with a specialty in volatile organic compounds, including things such as ethanol.
  • brynnsmom
    brynnsmom Posts: 945 Member
    I always just log the ingredients as what they are - wine, olive oil, etc. If I take in less calories than what was logged, then I am sure I underestimated somewhere else and it'll balance itself out.
  • tim_anderson
    tim_anderson Posts: 4 Member
    Some alcohol, in fact surprisingly more than you'd think, remains in the food. Consider the table at http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blalcohol12.htm

    Unless you are making commercial amounts of food with lots of alcohol that you are cooking for a long time and are willing to do the weighing and the math necessary to get a good estimate, I'd just count in all the calories and chalk it up to measuring error. You probably have other measuring errors in your ingredients since all calorie counts are averages/estimates and all our kitchen measurements are, too, to one degree or another.

    That is an interesting chart, thanks for sharing! I think that may have just negated any advice I just offered!
  • Deipneus
    Deipneus Posts: 1,854 Member
    Once I learned how they arrive at calorie estimates in food, I just never bothered logging things like wine used in cooking. Even if I meticulously measure and weigh every morsel I eat, I'd be surprised if the final total is accurate to within 10%+/-.
  • HealthyBodySickMind
    HealthyBodySickMind Posts: 1,207 Member
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