Some of you must be familiar with the idea of cooking using alcohol. We often see this cooking technique in cooking shows on television or cooking demonstrations on social media.
Cooking using alcohol itself means using alcohol to prepare food either as an ingredient, cooking fuel, or visual display.
Professional chefs usually add alcohol such as wine, beer, rum, or sake to enhance the taste and aroma of both modern and traditional dishes. However, alcohol has another function when added to certain foods. For example, if you add alcohol when marinating meat, the alcohol, in this case, will tenderize the meat.
While alcohol is a versatile ingredient that is ideal for enhancing the flavor of any dish, not everyone can or wants to include alcohol in the dishes they cook. There are several reasons why some people don’t use alcohol when cooking, such as allergies, can’t use it when serving food to children or those recovering.
Meanwhile, alcohol cannot be used by Muslims because it is one of the forbidden foodstuffs in Islamic teachings. Alcohol is prohibited in Islam because it is considered intoxicating, which technically means poison. The Qur’an, in several verses, prohibits intoxicants because one is not meant to hurt oneself in any way or form.
Although there is an assumption that alcohol mixed in the cooking process will evaporate during the cooking process, in reality, not all alcohol that is cooked can be evaporated 100%, the evaporation of alcohol in dishes during the cooking process is influenced by factors such as cooking temperature, cooking time, and the cooking method you use. So it is better to avoid using alcohol in cooking.
But you don’t need to worry because eliminating alcohol in a dish doesn’t mean you lose the taste of the food you want. Your food will still taste good even without the use of alcohol. The solution is to replace the use of alcohol in dishes with halal ingredients that function similarly to alcohol in cooking. Here are halal substitutes for alcohol in cooking.
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