ARTICLE
| Alcohol Cook Off Rates | Alcohol in Popular Dishes | Recipe Substitutions |
Alcohol Cook off rates
MYTH:
"All the Alcohol burns off when you cook it."
Foods that have been cooked with alcohol (beer, wine, vodka, etc.), still contain significant amounts of alcohol even if they've been sautéed, simmered, baked or set on fire.
The conventional wisdom accepted by just about everyone in the food world is that all the alcohol you add to a dish evaporates during cooking. It’s wrong. In fact, you have to cook something for a good three hours to removed virtually all traces of alcohol.
It may be that the amount of alcohol in a dish is modest to start with, but the fact that some of the alcohol remains should be of significant concern to Muslims.
A study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking methods. The results are as follows:
| Alcohol that has been... | ... has this much ethanol (alcohol) remaining. |
|---|---|
| added to boiling liquid, then removed from heat |
85%
|
| set on fire, flamed, 'flambé' |
75%
|
| left uncovered at room temperature, overnight |
70%
|
| baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture |
45%
|
| baked/simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture: |
|
| for 15 minutes |
40%
|
| for 30 minutes |
35%
|
| for 1 hour (60 minutes) |
25%
|
| for 1.5 hours (90 minutes) |
20%
|
| for 2 hours (120 minutes) |
10%
|
| for 2.5 hours (150 minutes) |
5%
|
|
Is It Haram? Or, Halal?
|
Alcohol in Popular Dishes
CHICKEN MARSALA (POLLO AL MARSALA)
Chicken Marsala is an Italian dish of chicken breasts cooked in a sauce of
fortified Marsala wine
.
SHRIMP SCAMPI
Shrimp Scampi is an Italian dish of shrimp (prawns) cooked in a garlicky, butter-
wine
sauce served over pasta.
SUSHI
Sake
and
mirin
, both Japanese
rice wines
, are common ingredients in sushi rice.