Alex Guarnaschelli's Tip For Fixing A Dish After You Add Too Much Wine

Sometimes accidents happen in the kitchen — even when you're a professional chef. Whether you've oversalted soup or find yourself stirring particularly runny gravy, there are plenty of options to prevent you from needing to toss your culinary attempts down the drain. Celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli has admitted to Food & Wine that she's made some pretty weak sauce when trying to put together a recipe for steak au poivre, so if you've come face-to-face with a cooking mishap, know that you're not alone. 

As great as wine can be in adding a touch of acidic complexity to dishes and deepening tastes, too much of anything may not be ideal. While the right amount of wine can transform an average dish into something extraordinary, an extra pour can push recipes below subpar classifications. Thankfully, there's a fix for those unexpected moments you've found yourself having unintentionally added too much wine to the pot simmering on the stove.

For recipes that didn't quite call for the amount of wine you've added to your pan, fear not. Guarnaschelli has plenty of tips for home chefs, but for those who have mistakenly poured too much wine into a recipe, she recommends that frazzled cooks can save their cooking efforts by adding butter or olive oil to the dish. These rich, luxurious ingredients can help offset any overpowering elements the extra wine has imparted into the recipe.

Don't want to add any more fats to your dish? You have alternatives: Consider balancing the excess wine with other kinds of ingredients. For more savory meal preparations, stir in a purée made of lightly-browned onions, garlic, and parsley. If you've mistakenly poured extra wine into the beginnings of something sweet like a mixed fruit tart, consider including more apples and raisins to turn down the volume of the wine that has found its way into your kitchen project.