What if you're a calorie-counter and you'd love to cook with hard liquor?

May 11, 9:31 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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There's a general rule when cooking with hard liquor. Do you baste your broasting meats or fish and vegetables with gin, vodka, blended and straight whiskey, Scotch, rye or bourbon?

These liquors also are used to baste and blend in with spare ribs, frankfurters, bacon, roast veal, beef vegetables and meatloaf. The number of calories in these hard liquors is determined largely by their proof (alcoholic content).

Each ounce you use in cooking contains one calorie for every degree of proof. For example, a 90 proof gin blended in the baked avocado and salmon casserole, contains 90 calories per ounce of gin.

An 86 proof Scotch is 86 calories per ounce. If you are watching the pounds, you can put this information to work in the following two valuable ways:

First cook with those liquors that are lowest in proof. Choose 86 proof bourbon rather than l00 proof straight whiskey. Make up your mind if the added liquor is going to be cooked in the meal, where the alcohol content will evaporate in the cooking process. Or if the liquor is poured into a cold sauce, not cooked, note all the calories will not burn out as the alcohol evaporates.

Second, drench your best proof of whatever liquor. An 80 proof gin has fewer calories than a 90 proof gin or vodka. Generally, you can estimate the number of calories in most distilled liquors by applying the calorie-per-ounce proof method. But keep an eye out for spirits floating high sugar content: Rum, cordials, and brandy.

If you're baking roast veal with brandy, the calorie count will be different than if you're over poached fruit without brandy. Remember that sugar calories won't evaporate in cooking like alcohol calories will.

Beer and ale have the fewest calories of all alcoholic beverages. For example, lager beer contains about 14 calories an ounce. Light ale about 12 calories an ounce.' In cooking with beer, you can create a highly nutritious "pot liquor" containing a good deal of Vitamin B in such creations as beer and veal stew, shrimp boiled in beer with the skin on

It's highly nutritious. The beer draws out the flavor from the fish. An example would be crabmeat a la king with beer gravy. Beer can be used to make gravy for roast meats and poultry.

Cook franks or fish in a beer sauce. It tastes "Eastern European," because in the Baltic Sea area and in the Caucasus Mountains as well as in parts of Scandinavia, beer is used to boil many hearty stews of meat, chowders, and braised foods. Let beer be your base or stockpot liquid. But what if you're a calorie-counter and you'd love to cook with liquor?

There's a general rule when cooking with hard liquor such as gin, vodka, or blended and straight whiskey, and Scotch, rye, or bourbon. These are used to baste and blend in with spare ribs, frankfurters, bacon, roast veal, beef, vegetables and meatloaf. The number of calories in these hard liquors is determined largely by their proof (alcoholic content).

Each ounce you use in cooking contains one calorie for every degree of proof. For example, a 90 proof gin blended in the baked avocado and salmon casserole, contain 90 calories per ounce of gin. An 86 proof Scotch is 86 calories per ounce. If you are watching the pounds, you can put this information to work in two valuable ways.

First, cook with those liquors that are lowest in proof. Choose 86- proof bourbon rather than a 100 proof straight whiskey. Make up your mind if the added liquor is going to be cooked in the meal, where the alcohol content will evaporate in the cooking process. Or if the liquor is poured into a cold sauce, not cooked, note all the calories will not burn out as the alcohol evaporates.

Second, drench your food in the lowest proof of whatever liquor is chosen. An 80 proof gin has fewer calories than a 90 proof gin or vodka.

Generally, you can estimate the number of calories in most distilled liquors by applying the calorie-per-ounce proof method. Keep eyes out for spirits floating around with high sugar content: Rum, cordials, and brandy.

If you're baking roast veal with brandy, the calorie count will be different than if you're serving brandy. Sugar calories won't evaporate in cooking. And scientific studies have shown that the alcohol content doesn't evaporate entirely either when a product is cooked.

Beer and ale have the fewest calories of all alcoholic beverages. Lager beer contains about 14 calories per ounce, light ale about 12 calories an ounce. In cooking with beer, create a highly nutritious "pot liquor" or beer/ale gravy containing a good deal of vitamin B in such creations as beer and veal stew, shrimp boiled in beer with the skin on. In this highly nutritious stock, the beer draws out the flavor from the shrimp.

Serve beer and crabmeat a la king or beer gravy from shrimp to serve over oriental vegetables and fish. Cook franks in a beer sauce. Boil all hearty meals in beer to re-create a Black Sea area flavor in soups, stews, chowders, and braised foods. Use beer to simmer your stockpot faire.

Bear in mind that a standard size beer can or bottle holds 12 ounces. A bottle of lager beer, used to add depth and dimension to soybean dishes, stews, meats and in baking your own breads, contains about 110 calories. This is almost twice the calories in 1 ounce of Scotch added to the same dish, baked bread, meat, or casserole.

Weight-watchers are better off cooking with light lagers and ales rather than dark, Bock beers, a favorite of Scandinavians vacationing in the Mediterranean, or drinkers of heavy ales. One of the best ways to control your calories in cooking with liquor is to do away with mixes and garnishes when you cook.

Start from scratch and add only low-calorie ingredients. Add taste but almost no calories to your food by flavoring the dish with Angostura bitters, orange peels, lemon and limejuice, and slices of fruit. Below is a list of the highest and lowest calorie liquor that you can add, according to your taste, to that favorite recipe. When cooking with beer, what you measure is what you taste.
Here's the table of calories for beers, wines, and other liquors.

Calorie Table 

Beers                         Calories
                                    
Ale, Light (12 oz.7    147
Ale, Heavy (12 oz.)    228
Beer, Bock (12 oz.)   202
Beer, Lager (12 oz.) 170
Porter, Stout (12 oz.)  217

Wines                                              Calories                                                                   

Champagne, Sauterne (3* oz.)  90
Chianti, Claret, Burgundy (3 1/2 oz.) 65 to75
Chablis, Moselle, Rhine (3 1/2 oz.)  60 to70
Muscatel, Port, Malaga (3 1/2 oz.) 155 to165
Vermouth, Sweet (3 1/2 oz.) 175
Vermouth, Dry (3 1/2 oz.)  110
Sherry (3 1/2 oz.) 140
Dubonnet (3 oz.) 155
Madeira (31 oz.)  110

Drinks     Highest Calories

Eggnog  335 per cup
Brandy Alexander 225 per cup
Hot buttered rum  250 per cup
Irish coffee  225 per glass 

All of these beverages contain over 200 calories per drink. But the leftover drinks in that cocktail shaker can be added to your favorite dish to transform the tidbit into that broth whose time has come.  

Count those calories when you add the leftover martinis, grasshoppers, mint juleps and rum colas into your cooking. Not that any of these drinks are ancient, but you could brew raspberry-taste-alike flavored ancient Egyptian beer. To brew your own beer in the style of the ancient Egyptians, see my Examiner article titled, Brew your own recession beer like the ancients. 

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