Cooking With Sake: Use Rice Wine in Everyday Cooking Recipes

Next time you are making a recipe that calls for wine in a marinade, why not try sake? This Japanese rice wine has a distinctive flavor and adds nice pan-Asian bite to any recipe. It also helps make meat more tender.

You can use sake in a marinade recipe you already know. Get creative about what flavors you think will taste good with sake. They can be Asian flavors, like ginger and turmeric and chilis, but they can also be Western, like English mustard and garlic and orange juice.

You also can use sake on its own — simply soak the meat in some sake, add some salt, pepper and garlic as you want.

I particularly like to use sake to marinate a leg of lamb. Rosemary and sake don't sound like a good pairing, so instead I soak the meat in sake and place cloves of garlic in small holes I slice in the meat.

Fish steamed in sake is delicious. Prawns cooked in sake would be great, as would scallops. Chicken and pork also taste great when cooked in sake. I've never tried beef in sake, but I imagine even that would work! You probably could also steam a lobster in sake.