Laura's Deglazing Tips

The Hows and Whys of Deglazing

You know when you're cooking food in a skillet, and the water cooks away and it starts to get brown and stick to the pan? Rejoice! A golden flavor opportunity has arrived! The brown bits ("fond") have lots of flavor, and you can capture and add more by adding a liquid which will quickly boil and loosen up the fond while you madly stir with a wooden spoon or other firm kitchen tool and scrape up the bits.

Ah, but what liquid to use? The two classics are broth/stock, and wine. For many sauces, I prefer dry wine for a two reasons:

• You get the flavor of the wine, but most of the alcohol boils off.
• The small amount of alcohol that is left is a great flavor carrier. You know how sauces with oil in them tastes better, even if the oil itself doesn't have a flavor? That's because oil is a carrier of some flavors such as spices. Well, alcohol carries different flavors, so a little wine in a dish brings a lot of flavor.

A dry wine in cooking adds negligible carbs, but remember that a sweeter wine has sugars in it.