Can you replace red wine with apera/sherry in a ragout sauce for lasagne?

Question

I am trying to make this lasagne recipe.

I have apera¹ in my pantry, which I bought to make stroganoff. Can I use this in place of red wine in the recipe? It may be sacrilegious, but I do not want to buy another bottle of liqueur, especially when I don't drink as I hate the taste of alcohol in general.

The recipe does say to replace the red wine with water, but I was wondering if I could just use the apera.

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¹ For those that aren't aware of what "apera" is - it is the Australian equivalent of sherry after some EU shenanigans made Australia unable to use the term 'sherry.'

Answer 1

Because the other answers feel awfully prescriptivist to me, and I hate prescriptivist cooking, let me give a definitive

Yes.

You can absolutely substitute a sherry (fortified wine) for red wine in your sauce. The point of adding the red wine into the saucy is not to make it boozy, but to help develop the flavors of ingredients which contain alcohol-soluble flavor compounds, and to add some of the flavors from the wine (though in that recipe, I am going to guess that the wine is pretty much overwhelmed by everything else in the recipe).

Moreover, that recipe isn't particularly traditional (as Tetsujin points out, Worcestershire is really out of place in there; the carrots and celery also feel a bit more French than Italian (to me), and the sugar feels like a kind of weird thing to add). Since you are already making something which isn't super-traditional, I wouldn't worry about crossing some prescriptivist line by further tweaking the recipe.

Experiment, and see what tastes good (and feel free to taste the ragu as you make it).

That being said, it might help to understand a bit what a "fortified wine" (like sherry) is. When a typical red (or white) wine is made, grape juice is fermented over time. In the process of fermentation, yeasts consume the sugar in the grade juice, and... excrete... alcohol, CO₂, and other biological waste products. Typically, the process of fermentation stops when either (a) all of the sugars have been consumed, or (b) the alcohol content of the environment becomes inimical to the yeast—this is usually around 15% alcohol by volume (ABV) (or both).

To make a fortified wine, the fermentation process is halted by adding a higher ABV liquor (a distilled liquor, such as brandy) to the wine. Adding the extra alcohol makes the environment hostile to the yeast, and prevents them from further fermenting the beverage. The result is that not all of the sugars are consumed by the yeasts, so the end result is boozier (higher ABV) and sweeter.

In this ragu recipe, the booziness is not really an issue (the red wine is probably around 12-15% ABV, the sherry is maybe 18-22%—a noticeable difference if you are drinking it, but likely a small difference in this recipe), but the sweetness could be. My recommendation would be to remove the sugar from the recipe and substitute the fortified wine for the red wine, one-to-one.

Alternatively, you could just leave the wine out entirely. After a long, covered simmer, the recipe calls for reducing the ragu until it thickens—if you start with less liquid in the recipe, this will go faster. You will almost certainly lose some of the complexity of the flavors—you could rejigger this by, for example, adding some beef stock or vinegar (like, just a little vinegar), but you might not find that necessary.

And, again, taste often. As you are making the sauce, taste it. See if you like it. Adjust as you go.

P.S. Ignore Tetsujin vis-à-vis the Worcestershire. My Jewish mother insists that it is part of a traditional recipe, and it's delicious. :P

Answer 2

It depends how sweet your locally made fortified wine is.

Many sherries are too sweet to substitute 1:1 where wine is needed, but not all. Even a sweet one might be usable, in smaller quantities with water to make up the volume, and/or reducing another sweet ingredient.

In robust tomato-based dishes, I've been known to use sherry, water, and a tiny bit of red wine vinegar. The proportions, from memory, would be something like 50% sherry, 45-48% water, and 2-5% vinegar. So quite possibly under a teaspoon, and not enough that you'd be able to taste it if you didn't know it was there.

I wouldn't replace it with just water otherwise. I'd increase the amount of any stock, or use vegetable bouillon, made up weak.

Answer 3

The goal is that there are flavors that are alcohol soluble, so other alcohols will work, they will just give other flavors to the sauce. In smaller amounts, it shouldn’t be too significant.

As you mention that you’re not a fan of alcohol, you may also want to see: What is a substitute for red or white wine in a recipe?

Update: you likely want to use less sherry than the amount of wine that the recipe calls for, as sherry is more alcoholic. I would personally deglaze with maybe 1/4 to 1/2 that amount of sherry, let it reduce for a minute or two (to cook off some of the alcohol), then add some other liquid to make up the difference.

Answer 4

Sorry, gonna throw a whole lot of unsubstantiated opinion in here

Of course there is no absolute ragu/bolognese recipe, every family has their own, but…

Put the apera in, it won't hurt, but for all that is holy [or random chance, depending on $DEITY]… don't put Worcestershire sauce in it!!!

I wouldn't put red wine in a ragu/bolognese anyway, but I wouldn't rail against it if you wanted to.

If I was being faithful to anything, I wouldn't put tomato puree in either. It's too punchy. It drowns your herbs & if you up the herbs, it all gets a bit 'in your mouth'. Reduce it naturally rather than force it with puree.

Eek, the further down this recipe I read, the worse it gets.
No sugar. [That's probably to try counterbalance the puree which doesn't need to be in it either.]

More oregano, less thyme. You do want to taste the oregano, but the thyme should just be the tiniest hint. You could hint a tiny bit of rosemary too, but really don't go mad with it.

Some variants use chicken liver [or even smooth Brussels] pate to soften texture & flavour - again, depends on source recipe.

[tbh, I'd find another recipe]

There are two main 'schools' of ragu.
One is onion, garlic, beef, canned tomatoes, oregano.
The other adds 'extras', carrot, celery, pate, even bacon/pancetta, sometimes [& a favourite of mine] a tiny dash of chilli, peperoncino oil or even a touch of cayenne.
Neither of these schools is right or wrong, but some of the 'extra extras' really don't belong.

Answer 5

What you link seems to be a somewhat interesting English/Australian blend of Neapolitan ragù and Bolognese ragù. Traditional recipes would either skip the celery and carrots (and give a more Neapolitan-style ragù) or use white wine instead of red (and give a more Bolognese-style ragù). Neither of them would traditionally have Worcestershire sauce (I’ve never heard of using this in a ragù before, my guess is it’s probably to add a bit of extra acid, salt, and umami to the flavor, which if done well should not be needed), and they would generally not traditionally use tomato paste (adding tomato paste is usually done with stuff like this to compensate for mediocre tomatoes being used in the sauce).

Apera or sherry is likely to be far too sweet for this. When a recipe calls for wine, it usually means a dry or semi-dry wine unless it specifies something else, and most aperas and sherries are significantly sweeter than that (even ‘dry’ ones in many cases). Apera or sherry will also add more alcohol than the wine would (their %ABV is anywhere from 15-22% usually, most wines are in the 10-14% range), which may impact the final flavor in unexpected ways. I would not recommend skipping the alcohol though, the amount used will not impart any significant alcohol flavor, but the presence of the alcohol will alter how everything else blends together. If you don’t want to get a bottle of red wine, I would instead suggest a bottle of white wine, which comes up far more frequently in sauce recipes in my experience than red does (that, and I just prefer white in ragù even when I do a Neapolitan-style ragù).

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On an unrelated note, I strongly recommend (real) Parmesan cheese for the besciamella. It blends much better with the tomato flavor of the ragù than things like Colby, cheddar, or Monterey Jack. I’ve also done Emmental once before in place of Parmesan (I did not realize I had no Parmesan, and the only hard white I knew would blend well into the besciamella was Emmental), and that turned out surprisingly good, but every other cheese I’ve tried for this just doesn’t work quite as well in terms of the flavor profile.