Japanese Recipe: Alternative to cooking sake?!
I don't have any sherry or white wine either, but I do have some shaoxing in the cupboard - will it work?
Also have mirin, too.
Thanks!
Answers: I'm trying to use a recipe for Soboro, and the ingredients call for Cooking Sake which I don't have at the moment.
I don't have any sherry or white wine either, but I do have some shaoxing in the cupboard - will it work?
Also have mirin, too.
Thanks!
Some people may refer to mirin as sweetened sake but that is inaccurate as they are different. Mirin is the liquid from the mix of glutinous rice, malted rice and shochu (a distilled grain liquor). Mirin is used as a sweetening agent & to give depth to stocks & sauces. I find mirin is great in marinades & stews.
Sake is made from a fermenting process using quality rice, good water & a powdered fermentation agent called koji. If you don't have sake, you can try dry sherry, white wine, dry vermouth, Chinese Shaoxing.
But it's ok to leave it out, I feel that cooking sake is not as indispensable as mirin. Another Japanese wine that you may want to try using in cooking is plum (ume) liquor. Generally I find that I can easily use Japanese rice wines in Western cooking as well, unlike for Chinese cooking wines.
A sweet white wine of any kind will work in a pinch; you may loose a tiny bit of original flavoring tho. Sweet reds won't work at all except in beef dishes. If there's nothing wine wise, use chicken broth.
use the mirin. It is essentially sweetened cooking sake!
yep shaoxing will work fine. Mirin is nothing like cooking sake.