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7. Nonalcoholic substitutes include lemon and chicken broth.
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Combining chicken broth and lemon juice provides a quick and tasty substitute for alcohol-free cooking sherry. Without the alcohol, this mixture offers the acidity and depth cooking sherry usually adds to a dish. For people who abstain from alcohol for personal, religious, or medical purposes or for chefs who just find themselves without sherry on hand, it's a great choice.
Starting with a chicken broth base, which offers a savoury basis akin to the umami notes in cooking sherry, build this alternative from there. The broth used should be exactly what the recipe calls for—that which corresponds with cooking sherry. To replicate the acidity of sherry, add a little lemon juice. Though this can be changed to suit taste, a decent starting point is one tablespoon of lemon juice per cup of chicken broth.
This alternative is beautiful in simplicity and availability. Given most homes probably have chicken broth and lemons on hand, this is a handy last-minute cooking alternative. Using homemade chicken broth can also provide your meals an additional degree of taste and nutrition.
Using this alternative should make you take entire taste profile of your food into account. Particularly in lighter meals or desserts, the savoury taste of the chicken broth will be absent from the original recipe and hence very apparent. For a more neutral taste in these situations, you can think about using veggie broth instead or even water with a bit of lemon juice.
Savoury foods like soups, stews, and sauces call especially for the chicken broth and lemon mix. It can deglaze pans, giving gravies and pan sauces complexity. In marinades, this mixture adds taste and helps tenderise meats. A little sugar or honey added to the broth and lemon mixture will help to more nearly replicate the taste profile of sweeter varieties of cooking sherry for dishes calling for a sweeter taste note.
Although this substitution won't exactly match the sophisticated tastes of cooking sherry, it offers a useful and tasty equivalent that can improve a great range of recipes. You may make a flexible alternative that fits many recipes calling for cooking sherry by varying the broth to lemon juice ratio and using other spices.
