Question – Safety of alcohol in cooking
I am planning to cook a stew for the family and the recipe calls for half a bottle of red wine – is this safe for my 11-month-old daughter (of course the stew would be mashed or chopped) or will the alcohol be a problem?
Answer:
It is commonly thought that all the alcohol ‘burns off’ or evaporates if it is added while food is being cooked, leaving just the flavour, but a study by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Nutrient Data Laboratory found that this is not the case – the amount of alcohol remaining in the food varied from 5% in a dish cooked for 21/2 hours to 20% in a dish cooked for 11/2 hours to 40% in a dish cooked for 15 minutes. And when alcohol was added to a liquid, such as a sauce, and then removed immediately from the heat a massive 85% remained. As well as a longer cooking time, using a larger cooking container increases the loss of alcohol as there is a larger surface area for alcohol to evaporate from.
While there are not specific guidelines on this subject, I would suggest thinking about the age of the child and the amount of alcohol in their serving of food. A young child would probably not eat more than a twelfth of the stew (or a third of an adult serving, assuming that the stew was to feed four adults), and (if you used half a bottle) this would be about 30 mls of wine. This is a quarter of a standard drink, but if the stew is cooked for an hour and a half, only about 20% of the alcohol would remain. Even so, I would tend not to give the stew to your daughter as she is so young, and has a much smaller liver for processing any alcohol. I would suggest waiting until she is older and heavier to serve her this dish, or you could remove some of the stew before the alcohol is added and cook it separately for her.