A glass of wine makes our favorite steak complete, especially when the sun sets and the evening grows colder. In celebrating and savoring this classic combination, it must be paired perfectly, so choose the best type of meat for the best kind of wine. Quite obviously, red doesn’t always work with red, and white won’t always do magic with white either. As all of your family gathers outside, make sure they can bask in the aroma of wine and barbeque.
Barbeque serves up a wide range of riches that pairing them with a certain wine can be a challenge or stretch to the imagination. Choosing the best bottle of wine for your barbeque can elevate any occasion you’re preparing your dishes for. There’s a lot of wine options that suit different tastes, so forget about those burnt burgers paired with a red solo cup of orange beer.
Tips on Pairing BBQ and Wine
Before you go to your favorite liquor store, you need to understand why certain types of wine fit well with different foods. The general idea is that red wines always pair well with any barbecued meat, especially beef, compared to white wine and other liquors. The main reason is that the high fat and savoriness in the meat perfectly balances out the red wine’s tannins.
Smoked and barbecued meat is rich in flavors of either wet brine or dry rub spices. These flavors are so intense, they suppress the wine and make it taste boring and flat. That’s why, if you don’t like very strong flavors, don’t pair acidic wine with food intensely smoked. This is where the pairing of wine and food gets tricky, as the goal is to make none of their tastes dominate the other.
First, you have to choose the right equipment as it’s the first step in acing your barbeque recipe. A pro-food smoker like ours helps you do your cooking task without having to sit with it for hours. This kind of equipment is designed to give you an overall delectable experience even as a beginner. Bradley Bisquette is a product that allows you to do your barbeque in a neat and safe way.
Don’t Forget About Brining
Brining is another important part of every barbecue where you marinate the meat using a concentrated mixture of water, spices, and salt. This process allows the meat to absorb all the moisture and flavors before barbecuing and smoking and enhances its tenderness and flavor as well. Also, we strongly discourage brining and barbecuing semi-cooked meat as this does not go very well with any kind of wine.
When you choose pork for your barbecue, you most often season it with sweet, spicy, tangy, and smoky flavors with matching sauces. Using wine as a seasoning actually helps balance the spice and smoke of your pork with a fruity flavor similar to spicy-smoky flavors. For example, Zinfandel, a wine made from a variety of black-skinned grapes mixed with plenty of backbone, can do your recipe some magic.
Some of us prefer the lighter fare, so we go with the simple chicken or fish barbecue to go along with Verdejo or Sauvignon Blanc. Also, both chicken and fish barbecues go perfectly well with a lightly oaked or unoaked Chardonnay. A more intense, sweeter, and aromatic Gewürztraminer would be a great choice as well to go along with your barbecued chicken wings.
Final Thoughts
Smoking and barbecuing can be a remarkable or tiring experience for newbies, depending on the procedures being followed. These tips & tricks, we hope, can give you some insightful thoughts and ideas on preparing food with your favorite wine.
We have an interactive website where we market our products, like the very popular Bradley Bisquettes. There is also a blog on the website with tips and tricks on food smoking and other food preparation procedures. A wide variety of food recipes are also available on the website that any cook can try.
Barbecue is an excellent and healthy way of cooking meat, which is 99% of the time made perfect by a glass of wine. For more great ideas on how to get the most out of your Bradley Smoker, check out the awesome articles on our Bradley Smoker Food Smoking Blog for more tips & tricks.
