Do you use dry vermouth in your cooking?

>> you must consider that she gave that advice in the bad old days <<
I know, Jenise. And yet it does work, and I don't always have a bottle of white open to drink. I also keep a bottle of inexpensive dry sherry around. Try adding a teaspoonful to a cheese omelet sometime!

I want to second what John said. White vermouth has that interesting bouquet of herbs that can make a soup.

Read this article about Waterzooi -- a Belgian soup from Ghent that was originally made with fish. As the canals around Ghent silted up they started making it with chicken. But it's good either way. (The page takes a while to load on my MacBook)

http://creatingnirvanatoday.blogspot.co ... -soup.html

And when I don't have white wine I'll gladly sip a tumbler of vermouth with an ice cube.

ALSO I'd like to second the fact that they hand-make wonderful vermouths in Spain, and if you find that you are lucky. My neighbor met a bartender who gave him a bottle of his own special vermouth -- I tasted it and it was fine stuff.

[Jenise]

Dry Vermouth has been my go to dry white wine for years. I also use some left over whites. I did come across an inexpensive Austrian white that came in liter bottles with a screw top that I bought a case of. The name has slipped from this old mind.

Berger (or Bergen) gruner veltliner?

gruner veltliner...can't recall the name..inexpensive and came in a screw top liter bottle.

Because of this thread, I just bought 2 bottles of Noilly Prat. Not sure I ever bought it before. We have been routinely buying Martini and Rossi, just mainly because that is what they sell at Costco.

It really is different, both the white and the red have an interesting "high note" that's entirely missing from Martini and Rossi. I tried to explain what I meant by that to Louise. It is in the neighborhood of mint, but it doesn't smell like mint. It's nice and I can see that it would be noticed in a cocktail. [PS, pine needles!] There is also a difference in the bitterness, very subtle but different from Martini and Rossi. I'm so used to M&R that I think I really like both, but I am glad to learn about this stuff and will probably be buying both. One of my main uses for Vermouth is to have a little juice glass, perhaps with an ice cube, when I don't want to open a bottle of wine. Both brands will be good for that. I don't generally keep whiskey around so I don't have that many Old Fashioneds...

[Jenise]

Frank, glad you found a desirable difference. I have tried to remember which one I bought the one time I couldn't find Noilly Prat, Martini and Rossi or Cinzano, and though I can't be concrete I'm inclined to think it was the Cinzano. I also just remembered that it wasn't that I couldn't find the Noilly Prat, but that I was doing a new Italian recipe and not knowing the relative difference between French and Italian vermouths I bought the Italian as reccomended. To a cook used to Noilly Prat's herbaceousness, it seemed dull and flat. Also, it lacked intensity, and I ended up using quite a bit more (like, 3x) than the recipe called for and that would have been needed for the same relative effect from the NP.

I'm going to have to pour a little vermouth over ice--never tried that. And I'm not a cocktail drinker, so my use of it has been limited to cooking.

Jenise, I have been thinking that if you had the right bitters, you could shake the bottle a couple of times over Martini and Rossi and transform it into something closer than Noilly Prat. I have half a dozen kinds of bitters, but Angostura could work I think. Anyway now I know where to buy both...

The Mushroom Soup from Heston Blumenthal at Home calls for dry white vermouth. I like the soup so much that I ran out so I've been substituting some dry red vermouth I had on hand - Punt E Mes. It also works well but it makes the color a bit muddy