Should You Cook With Alcohol During Recovery? 

Vodka sauce, beer bread, and bourbon-braised short ribs — alcohol is a frequent addition to many recipes. But if you’re on the journey to quit or cut back on alcohol, that once-innocent splash of liquor may be a more complicated choice. As you navigate this new chapter of your life, you might wonder whether cooking with alcohol is still a smart option.

Let’s explore the nitty-gritty of what actually happens to alcohol when we cook with it, and the potential impacts of doing so during recovery. With a newfound understanding and a list of alternatives, we can make more informed decisions and choices that align with our goals.

Understanding Recovery

To decide whether or not we should cook with alcohol during recovery, let’s first understand what recovery is. Recovery refers to committing to developing a healthier relationship with alcohol, typically following misuse or alcohol use disorder (AUD). 

AUD is diagnosed using criteria in the DSM-V and is characterized by the impaired ability to quit or cut back despite negative consequences. It involves both physical and neurological dependence due to the way alcohol affects us. 

Alcohol feeds our brain’s reward system, tethering drinking to a pleasurable experience, which makes us come back for more. As we continue to drink regularly, our body also adjusts to exposure to a certain level of alcohol. When we quit or cut back in recovery, our brain and body resist at first, leading to physical and mental challenges such as alcohol withdrawal and cravings. To overcome AUD, we need to fight against these physical and mental urges to drink.

We’re committed, but we’re cooking a new recipe for dinner one night and see that it calls for a splash of wine. This makes us freeze, should we or should we not add it? To help answer this, let’s learn more about what happens to alcohol when we cook it.

Does Alcohol Evaporate When Cooked?

You may have heard that alcohol evaporates when you cook it, but does alcohol cook out of food completely? Whether it’s that flashy flame that tops your crème brûlée or the glug of white wine in your pasta sauce, it should be fine since the alcohol evaporates, right? Not quite. 

Alcohol does evaporate. Not just when we cook it, but when it’s exposed to air (although not enough to notice). When we heat it, evaporation speeds up. We can look up “how long to boil wine to remove alcohol” or “how long to cook alcohol out of wine,” but the answer is, it depends. Influential factors such as the type of alcohol, the temperature, cooking time, cooking vessel, and added ingredients can affect how quickly alcohol evaporates. But no matter how long we cook it, it’s not possible to completely eliminate it. Evaporation plateaus when it reaches about 5% of the alcohol we started with. Not 5% alcohol by volume, but 5% of the alcohol we put in. Take a look at estimates from the USDA Table of Nutrient Retention on how long it takes for alcohol to evaporate to a certain amount.

So the cup of vodka we threw into our pasta sauce that came from a 15-minute weeknight recipe can still have a little less than half a cup of vodka in it. Research shows that depending on different factors, our food can retain anywhere from 4%-85% of the alcohol. In recovery, where every decision can impact our journey, this chance may not be one we want to take.

Key takeaway: Although the exact amount of alcohol remaining after cooking varies and may not be significant enough to get us drunk, the fact is that some amount of alcohol still remains, depending on the factors we mentioned earlier. Cooking with alcohol isn’t recommended for those of us who are in recovery, pregnant, or breastfeeding.

Potential Consequences of Cooking With Alcohol During Recovery

To understand why cooking with alcohol isn’t recommended in recovery, let’s take a closer look at the consequences: 

• The presence of alcohol can be a trigger. Whether it’s having the bottle in the house or the lingering taste of booze in your food, alcohol can be a trigger for drinking. Learn more about your specific triggers with the Drinking Triggers Assessment Tool.
• Some alcohol is still alcohol. Although the amount of alcohol that remains after cooking may not be a lot, alcohol is still alcohol. According to the WHO, any amount of alcohol is harmful to our health. 
• It’s like holding hands with dependence. Remember how we discussed that alcohol hijacks our brain’s reward system? Well, alcohol in our food is still alcohol and can feed our dependency, making it more difficult to overcome dependence. 
• It can interact negatively with medications. Alcohol interacts with many different medications, leading to potentially dangerous side effects. Additionally, some medications used to treat AUD such as disulfiram are meant to cause unpleasant effects when mixed with alcohol, even when it’s been cooked.

As we can see, cooking with alcohol may have seemed like no big deal at first, especially under the false notion that alcohol evaporates after cooking. But after further investigation, we can see from these potential consequences that cooking with alcohol during recovery isn’t a risk worth taking.

Alternatives to Cooking With Alcohol

When it comes to creating delicious dishes without using alcohol, there’s a world of flavorful alternatives that add just as much depth and complexity to your recipes without the risk. Choosing the right alternative depends on what we’re using it for:

• Tenderizing or marinating. Vinegar, acidic fruit juices, and sparkling beverages are highly acidic and break down collagen to tenderize meat. 
• Flavoring. When choosing an alternative for flavoring, use ingredients that still pack a punch, such as broths, stocks, and vinegars. For example, instead of red wine, try red wine vinegar or chicken broth. You can also match the flavor using the base ingredient of the alcohol, such as using espresso instead of coffee liqueur. Just keep in mind that you may have to adjust your recipes if you use substitutes as non-alcoholic alternatives can have different amounts of sugar or sodium than their alcoholic counterparts. Also keep in mind that non-alcoholic alternatives can still contain trace amounts of alcohol.
• Leavening. Alcohol is sometimes used for leavening baked goods due to the yeast content. Instead of alcohol, opt for good old yeast or baking powder. 
• Flambéing. Flambéing involves pouring alcohol on a dish and lighting it on fire to create a certain flavor. To achieve a similar flavor, you can select ingredients that are still flammable, such as zero-proof spirits, fruit juices, and flavored extracts like vanilla or almond.

With these alternatives, our recipes won’t miss a beat and we’ll be able to stay on track with our goals to quit or cut back on alcohol!

A Taste of Clarity

Deciding whether to cook with alcohol during recovery is a personal choice as each recovery journey is different. However, understanding the effects and exploring alternatives helps us make more informed decisions that align with our wellness journey. Cooking alcohol gets rid of some of the alcohol, but not all, and in recovery, it may not be a risk we want to take. Keeping the kitchen alcohol-free is like adding the final touch to a recipe for lasting wellness. It ensures every dish you create is a step towards a healthier, alcohol-free future!