Can anybody explain to me the differences in cooking wines. For example, I am looking at a recipe that calls for dry red wine. I got red cooking wine at the grocery store. Another recipe calls for red wine vinegar. What is the difference?

Red wine vinegar is just that, vinegar. You can get white wine vinegar too. Vinegar in France, Italy, Spain other important wine producing countries is almost invariably made from wine. The wine is is left, or caused, to go sour; the variety depends on whether the wine was red or white. In the UK vinegar is made from beer and called 'malt vinegar'. So you'd use it in a salad dressing, for example, such as vinaigrette ( or in England on fish and chips; we are not great salad fans) to add an acid, sharp taste.

Cooking wine is not a term we use here as such but it must be wine which is only really good enough to be cooked with, not for drinking, though it may be drunk. The cooks use whatever robust red wine that is cheap enough in stews and casseroles or whatever is left over from the last meal, before it goes sour.

There used to be a preparation, a concentrate, made from wine which was meant to be added to stews etc; the idea was to save buying a bottle of wine for this purpose; it seems to have disappeared from our shelves, probably because people who wanted the flavour would now be buying wine anyway.It may still be available and, if the household does not normally buy much wine, be a useful ingredient.

Morticia, all chefs will tell you, never cook with wine you wouldn't drink. COoking wines aren't terribly cheap, and with that money, you could buy a lesser expensive 'real' bottle of wine that will taste much better in your cooking. Cooking wines tend to be on the salty side. If there are no wine drinkers in your household, several of the winerys are now bottling small, individual sized bottles of wine that would be perfect for cooking without the waste of the entire bottle. These bottles can be purchased in four-packs and cost only around $8. I guarantee the real stuff will taste much better.

I agree with Jenni on cooking only with wine that is good enough to drink. If you don't drink wine, but only cook with it, you can also fill up an ice cube tray with the remaining wine and use it the next time you need to cook with wine...just drop in the ice cube(s)...

Thanks for the info. I would have never thought about saving it in the ice cube trays for later use....good information to have. Thanks again.