Let Your Tastebuds Be Your Guide

Let me cut to the chase right from the beginning. Cook some food, buy some wine, eat the food, drink the wine, and let your mouth be your guide. That’s basically it. I’m trying to tell you how to pair food and wine. Your wine merchant or your “helpful friend” is going to try to tell you how to do it, or the liquor store owner is going to try to tell you how to do this. It is up to your own personal taste. There really is no other way around it.

Why Bother?

If you are eating a meal and then you take a drink of that wine and something doesn’t taste quite right, it is your pairing. So why do people go through all the trouble of pairing food and wine anyway? It’s because if you get it right, the food tastes better and the wine tastes better. If you get it wrong, one of the two, or both, aren’t going to taste as good. So that is why there are all these rules. I am going to go over a few of the basics, but these are just guidelines. It can be so confusing that I have to admit to you, I don’t even go there. Let me just cook and if someone brings a bottle of wine, let’s open it and enjoy.

General Guidelines

If you are serving highly acidic food (meaning it is tomato based, or citrus based) go with a highly acidic wine. In this instance, you are matching the flavor characteristics of the food and wine. Some examples of acidic wines are Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, maybe a Chianti. If you are serving rich or fatty foods like duck or goose or cheese, maybe you want to try a wine that is more oaky, like a Chardonnay perhaps. Or if you prefer a red wine, try a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot. With spicy foods that are highly seasoned or are smoky or salty, try a complimentary wine that is light and fruity. You could choose either a red or a white wine like a Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, or a Zinfandel. If you are serving a sweet sauce with your food, like a fruit sauce, try a sweet wine. Be careful to make sure the wine is as sweet as the food. If your wine isn’t as sweet as your food, then the wine is going to taste sour. Does that make sense?

Match Or Contrast

Sometimes you want to serve an acidic food with an acidic wine. You may also want to try and balance the flavor characteristics like pairing spicy food with a fruity wine. The easiest thing to do is to cook with the wine as a marinade or the flavor of the sauce, then serve the same wine with that course. This reminds me to make an important point. If you’ve got any “Cooking Wine” in your pantry, that you bought at the grocery store, go there now, open the cap and pour it down the drain. Do not, I repeat, “DO NOT!”, ever use cooking wine to cook with. I know, it sounds like an oxy moron, right? But that stuff is horrible. I hope you never ever actually tasted it. It is disgusting, it is not wine and it is only going to ruin your food. I don’t even know why they sell it.

Let me make myself perfectly clear. Make some food, buy some wine, eat the food, drink the wine. If it tastes good in your mouth you win! You have made a successful food and wine pairing. If it doesn’t taste good, then try again!

Start With The Bottom Line

Now don’t panic. I am not a wine connoisseur, so this shouldn’t be terribly complicated, but maybe for some people it will be. Entire books are written on food and wine combinations so, there are a lot of customs, a lot of “laws”, and a lot of rules. But after looking at as much information as I could stand, it all comes down to your personal taste. Look, buy some wine that you like. If you have had it before and you think it is good, buy it. Cook a great meal, invite some interesting people to dinner and have a good time. Ok, that is it, thanks!

The Most Basic Rules

OK, you knew I had more to say than that. And I do. So here goes. Everybody knows the basic rule that red wine goes with red meat.

Fish, poultry and white meat goes with white wine. Everybody has heard that rule, I am sure. But while that may be true, it is not always true. There are all different types of wines now and there are some extremely assertive white wines that could overpower a fish or a pork dish like roast pork loin. You have to let your own taste buds be your guide.

Ask For Help

Now, the next thing that you could do is create your menu based on all the tips that I have given you so far, and then consult with someone who knows better. Probably better than me. There’s a very good chance you will find somebody who knows more about it than me. Whether it is a friend of yours or whether it is the wine merchant or whether it is your liquor store owner (beware of the liquor store that only has boxes of wine or screw off caps), but even then, they might know more than me.

Proper Pairing

The second suggestion that I have for you is what you are trying to do it pair the two. You don’t want your food to overpower your wine and you don’t want your wine to overpower your food. That is the reason why you’ve got the white wine, white meat – red wine, red meat rule. Generally, fish and poultry recipes are more on the light side. Your red meat and beef combinations are generally more hearty, so that is where this basic rule comes from. But for every rule, you get exceptions. What about Chicken Cacciatore? Let’s say you made the dish with a chicken breast. You have a nice mild, white meat and a very assertive, acidic sauce. You would probably serve a red wine in that instance.

Three Basic Characteristics

There are three basic qualities that you are looking for. The first quality is “body”, whether the wine is light or heavy (that is basically how it tastes in your mouth). The second quality is the “intensity” of the wine (whether it is bold and assertive or it is delicate and mild) and the third quality is the flavor characteristics. Is the wine dry or is it fruity? Now, with a lot of American wines, all you have to do is read the label and the vineyard will probably describe these characteristics on the back of the bottle. Foreign wines are not as likely to advertise in this manner.

Is Wine A Condiment?

Look, bottom line here, is your wine should compliment your food like a condiment. Is that confusing? Well, it may be, but I hope not.

Hi, I’m Marty Richardson from chefmartyrich.com. Welcome back to our daily tip series.

A Chef Without A Kitchen

As you can see, I am not in the kitchen, and I am not very happy! I went to the Civic Center today to use the kitchen and they are having some kind of function there and it was just too loud for me to tape. Home again, home again, jigitty gig. I’m on the back porch and as I was coming into the driveway I picked up the mail today and lo and behold there is my Costco Connection magazine with Al Gore on the front, talking about energy.

Costco Connections

There are two articles in the magazine that I thought were pretty interesting and I wanted to share them with you. One was on pairing wine and cheese. And the other one was buying smart: nuts. Is it a coincidence that these are the topics that we are scheduled to talk about this week? You might have thought the topics a little strange but, apparently, I’m on the right track!

Wine and Cheese

This article is by Natalie MacLean, and the very first sentence is ‘One of the lingering myths about matching food and wine is that cheese should be paired only with red wine”. Then she goes on for the balance of the article to talk about all kinds of white wines that pair very well with cheese. The first thing she talks about here is “luckily a few simple rules can help. The first is that the milder the cheese the easier to match”. So the point here is, as I told you before, you don’t want he food to overpower the wine and you don’t want the wine to overpower the food. So if you have a mellow cheese you are looking for a mellow wine. Something with a low alcohol content of 12% or less. Several examples are Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer, and Pinot Gris.

Playing Favorites

Then, she says her favorite cheese is goat cheese or chevre. This has a chalky hard grassy flavor and it pairs well with a zingy Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand or South Africa, or a flinty unoaked Chardonnay from California. So now she is comparing and contrasting rather than trying to match. The third example she talks about is soft cheeses. She can’t resist “a thick rich Brie slightly warmed with its white savory lava oozing onto a baguette”. Yum, just thinking about it makes me hungry. There is a complication with soft cheeses. They are “tougher to match because their opulent texture they can overpower the wine”. She suggests a robust white oaked aged Chardonnay from California. There is a lot of balance and thought involved, but hopefully some of these examples will help guide you.

More Wine and Cheese Tips

Another good point in the article was “the longer a cheese ripens the higher its fat content and the stronger its flavors so it can hold its own against a robust red”. Like a Bordeaux. And then she ends this particular part of the article talking about port. Port is a fortified red wine usually served with dessert as a match for blue cheeses like Roquefort. Ms. MacLean also discusses appetizers and wines.

Wines and Appetizers

She has three tips in this section. “Peanuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and other nuts all have an oily, salty taste and need a wine with an acidic backbone as Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc to balance their taste”. Then her second point, I covered, which is “spicy Asian and Thai foods need some sweetness to temper their heat. A late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling compliment these foods without getting clobbered”. The last tip is something I didn’t know, but I think is pretty important because we are going to cover this later in our appetizer section. “Fishy snacks” (interesting description) “such as oysters, shrimp and salmon are too briny for red wines and make the wine taste acidic” So she suggests a sparkling wine like champagne to cleanse the pallet. So I thought that is an interesting match.

Again, her name is Natalie MacLean. She is the author of Red, White and Drunk All Over (which is a great title). She offers online food and wine matching at www.natliemaclean.com . So there is a reference for you. If this has been confusing, you can go to her website and she can match your food with a particular wine.

The other article was about nuts, so I am going to introduce that in the next video. I am going to shoot that right now and then we will probably post these videos back to back. I am trying to keep moving forward. Thanks for watching and we are going to get to serving spiced nuts as an appetizer straight away.

Hi Marty Richardson here from chefmartyrich.com. Welcome back to our daily tip series. Today I am going to start in on food and wine combinations.

Start With The Bottom Line

Now don’t panic. I am not a wine connoisseur, so this shouldn’t be terribly complicated, but maybe for some people it will be. Entire books are written on food and wine combinations so, there are a lot of customs, a lot of “laws”, and a lot of rules. But after looking at as much information as I could stand, it all comes down to your personal taste. Look, buy some wine that you like. If you have had it before and you think it is good, buy it. Cook a great meal, invite some interesting people to dinner and have a good time. Ok, that is it, thanks!

The Most Basic Rules

OK, you knew I had more to say than that. And I do. So here goes. Everybody knows the basic rule that red wine goes with red meat.

Fish, poultry and white meat goes with white wine. Everybody has heard that rule, I am sure. But while that may be true, it is not always true. There are all different types of wines now and there are some extremely assertive white wines that could overpower a fish or a pork dish like roast pork loin. You have to let your own taste buds be your guide.

Ask For Help

Now, the next thing that you could do is create your menu based on all the tips that I have given you so far, and then consult with someone who knows better. Probably better than me. There’s a very good chance you will find somebody who knows more about it than me. Whether it is a friend of yours or whether it is the wine merchant or whether it is your liquor store owner (beware of the liquor store that only has boxes of wine or screw off caps), but even then, they might know more than me.

Proper Pairing

The second suggestion that I have for you is what you are trying to do it pair the two. You don’t want your food to overpower your wine and you don’t want your wine to overpower your food. That is the reason why you’ve got the white wine, white meat – red wine, red meat rule. Generally, fish and poultry recipes are more on the light side. Your red meat and beef combinations are generally more hearty, so that is where this basic rule comes from. But for every rule, you get exceptions. What about Chicken Cacciatore? Let’s say you made the dish with a chicken breast. You have a nice mild, white meat and a very assertive, acidic sauce. You would probably serve a red wine in that instance.

Three Basic Characteristics

There are three basic qualities that you are looking for. The first quality is “body”, whether the wine is light or heavy (that is basically how it tastes in your mouth). The second quality is the “intensity” of the wine (whether it is bold and assertive or it is delicate and mild) and the third quality is the flavor characteristics. Is the wine dry or is it fruity? Now, with a lot of American wines, all you have to do is read the label and the vineyard will probably describe these characteristics on the back of the bottle. Foreign wines are not as likely to advertise in this manner.

Is Wine A Condiment?

Look, bottom line here, is your wine should compliment your food like a condiment. Is that confusing? Well, it may be, but I hope not.

Tomorrow, I’m going to go through a list that is a little more specific about menu choices and the accompanying wines. Hopefully that might be a little bit clearer for you. At the most basic level, just trust your taste buds. Thanks very much for watching. Talk to you tomorrow.