Cooking wine is a kind of holdover from prohibition. People who grew up thinking alcohol is evil didn’t want any in their homes. But they wanted those delicious flavors in the kitchen. Cooking wine seemed like a reasonable compromise.
In essence, cooking wine is really bad wine with a lot of salt added later. This makes it practically undrinkable for anyone looking to ‘get drunk’. However, being a combination of bad wine and a lot of salt, it is also quite unpleasant to add to food! If you don’t want to put something in your mouth in the first place, do you really want to put it on a warming plate, which means its (bad) flavors are now really concentrated?
Using wine for cooking is, simply put, a way to spoil a perfectly good recipe. There really is no reason to use cooking wine instead of regular wine. If you are concerned about young people getting into your wine, place it in a tall cabinet. Or put it in a locked cupboard! There are probably a LOT of other much nastier substances in your home that should be locked up if you’re worried about these kinds of things. But deliberately cooking with a nasty substance can literally ruin your recipes. You rarely save money buying cooking wine.
If you have a recipe that calls for wine or cooking wine, use a real wine from your local wine store. All the wines used in the kitchen should be found there quite easily. If your recipe calls for cooking wine and it goes with regular wine, be sure to test your recipe after adding the wine to see if you need to add a little salt as well. Some common types of cooking wine are:
Sherry
Sherry is a fortified wine (with added brandy) from southern Spain. Because it is fortified, you can keep a bottle for months after opening, as long as you keep it sealed and cold. It usually has a rich and sweet flavor.
Marsala
Marsala comes from Sicily, which is the island at the tip of the boot of Italy. It is a brandy-fortified wine and comes in red and white varieties, although red is the most popular type. It is a rich and sweet flavor and is used a lot in Italian cuisine, especially Chicken Marsala.