sherry
A fortified Spanish wine, ranging from dry to sweet; used both as a drink and, in cooking, to add depth to sauces and soups.
Substitutions
- equal parts red wine + rice vinegar
Tips & common mistakes
Bottles labeled specifically as cooking sherry usually have salt added as a preservative, unlike sherry meant for drinking -- if a recipe was written with regular sherry in mind, using the salted cooking version can leave a dish oversalted, so check the label and scale back other seasoning if that's what's on hand.
Storage
Being fortified with extra alcohol, sherry keeps noticeably longer than regular wine after opening -- refrigerated and recorked, a drier style stays good for a few weeks and a sweeter style even longer, compared with the few days an ordinary opened wine has before it turns.