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The Chocolate Rum Cheesecake recipe posted below has sparked an interesting discussion about alcohol in recipes.

For various reasons, some people do not want to cook with alcohol, and this is not the first time I've ever been asked if there's something you can "substitute" for it so they can still try the recipe.

The bottom line is: if you want to recreate the same tastes as the recipe, there is no substitution. Having said that, though, you can change the ingredients around in many recipes and come up with something delicious, although it will NEVER be the same as the original. That might not be a bad thing - you might end up with something you like more. But there is no straight across substitution for alcohol that gives you identical results.

If you're ok with that, the basic rule for alcohol substitution is that you need to replace both the flavor and the volume of liquid that it brings to the party.

Volume is the easy part: generally you can make it up by increasing the volumes of other liquids already in the recipe. For example, if a sauce calls for 1 cup of chicken stock and 1/4 cup white wine, it's pretty safe to run with 1 1/4 cups of chicken stock.

Just keep in mind that alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so if you substitute water-based liquids for alcohol, your cooking times may be longer, sauces may take longer to reduce, etc.

Flavor is somewhat trickier. Alcohols are a source of acidity, sweetness, and complex carbons which transform into flavor over long cooking times, and how to balance these is something that has to determined for each individual recipe. Once you've determined that, you can choose another ingredient that will bring that characteristic to your dish.

Common ingredients used are vinegar (white, cider, sherry, balsamic, herbal) (sherry and champagne vinegars are non-alcoholic), non-alcoholic wines, fruit juices, and fruit purees (tamarind paste brings an interesting sourness). How much to use depends on your exact recipe, what effect you're trying to achieve, and how densely flavored the new ingredient is with respect to the alcohol you're not using. Sometimes you can increase the herbs or other flavorings in the recipe or just add some more salt.

You cannot substitute these 1:1 for the alcoholic ingredient, because some of them have more intense flavors and some less, and the same volume will not produce the same results. I know you don't want to hear this, but you're going to have to do a lot of experimenting yourself with each recipe to find out what will work for you.

In baking, it becomes trickier, and exactly how the alcoholic ingredient is used becomes even more important. If it's just being used like a syrup to moisten a cake, you can always substitute a simple syrup (1:1 water with sugar, boiled until dissolved, then cooled), perhaps even flavored with an extract. So a rum cake that has no rum in it until the final dousing with a rum syrup would be easy to change.

Cheesecakes are also extraordinarily forgiving - you can alter their ingredients amazingly, but as long as you keep the same ratio of cream cheese to eggs, they generally come out all right. Same with puddings and custards.

If you're talking cakes and the like with alcohol baked in, things get a lot trickier because the alcohol is probably working with the chemistry of the other ingredients, so substitution is more than just volume and flavor. The safest course of action in this case is to make a different cake.

Which brings up the point that there are some recipes that simply will not work without the alcoholic ingredient. The easy beer bread recipe I posted earlier is one of them.

Finally, don't ever, EVER use anything labeled "cooking wine". They are wines that are so bad that they no one would buy them as drinking wine, then they're loaded with salt to the point where no one can drink them anyway. So not only are you putting something in your food that is terrible to begin with, you're also adding an unknown quantity of salt, which takes a lot of the control over the seasoning of the dish out of your hands. Forget it.

This was the first thing taught in my Culinary Class

Some does, and how much does depends a lot on the cooking method. Here on ochef is a table of methods and percentage of alcohol remaining. The bottom line is that some does remain.

For cooking, I like to get the 4 packs of the little bottles with the screw caps. You don't need a really expensive wine to cook with - when they say don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink, they're not saying use the really good stuff, they're saying use a wine that is drinkable.

Those little bottles are about a cup each, which is what most recipes call for. And if it calls for a half cup, it's half a bottle, the cap screws back on, and it lasts in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

If you can't use it in a couple of weeks, pour it into a ziplock baggie and put it in the freezer. It'll freeze just fine and last a long time in there.