Cooking does not remove all the alcohol from food. Depending on the method and time, anywhere from 5% to 85% of the original alcohol remains in the finished dish. Even after two and a half hours of simmering, about 5% is still there. The common belief that alcohol “burns off” completely is a myth.
Alcohol Retention by Cooking Time
The USDA maintains a table of nutrient retention factors that includes ethanol. The numbers paint a clear picture: short cooking times leave most of the alcohol behind, and only very long simmering gets you close to zero.
- Stirred into hot liquid, no further cooking: 85% remains
- Baked or simmered for 15 minutes: 40% remains
- Baked or simmered for 30 minutes: 35% remains
- Baked or simmered for 1 hour: 25% remains
- Baked or simmered for 1.5 hours: 20% remains
- Baked or simmered for 2 hours: 10% remains
- Baked or simmered for 2.5 hours: 5% remains
The steepest drop happens in the first 15 minutes, where more than half the alcohol evaporates. After that, each additional hour of cooking chips away at the remainder more slowly. If you’re making a quick pan sauce that simmers for 10 or 15 minutes, you’re keeping a meaningful amount of alcohol in the dish.
Why Flambéing Doesn’t Burn It All Off
Lighting a dish on fire looks dramatic, but it’s one of the least effective ways to remove alcohol. The USDA puts flambéed dishes at about 75% retention, meaning three quarters of the alcohol survives those impressive flames. A USDA-funded study found that in a model caramel sauce made with butter, sugar, and vodka, igniting the alcohol removed only about 13% of the ethanol. The heated but not-ignited version lost a nearly identical 14%. In other words, the fire itself contributes almost nothing to alcohol removal in a real recipe. It’s the sustained heat over time that does the work, not the spectacle.
Why Alcohol Doesn’t Simply Boil Away
Pure ethanol boils at 173°F (78°C), well below water’s 212°F (100°C). That leads many people to assume it should vanish quickly from a simmering pot. But alcohol in cooking is never pure. It’s dissolved in water, fats, sugars, and other ingredients that hold onto it.
When ethanol and water mix, they form what chemists call an azeotrope: a blend that behaves almost like a single substance. At a certain ratio (about 95% ethanol to 5% water), the mixture boils at a fixed temperature and the vapor has the same composition as the liquid. This means you can’t separate the two simply by boiling. In a cooking context, where the alcohol concentration is far lower and surrounded by other ingredients, evaporation is even slower. The alcohol molecules are essentially trapped in the liquid, escaping gradually rather than all at once.
Other Factors That Affect Retention
The USDA data assumes stirred, simmered, or baked dishes, but real-world cooking varies. Several things shift the numbers up or down.
Surface area matters. A wide, shallow skillet exposes more liquid to the air than a tall, narrow pot, so alcohol evaporates faster in a sauté pan than in a deep Dutch oven. Whether you cook with a lid on also makes a difference. A covered pot traps vapor and slows evaporation, while an uncovered pot lets alcohol escape freely. If you want to minimize alcohol, cook uncovered in a wide pan.
When the alcohol is added also counts. The USDA lists a separate category for alcohol “not stirred in, baked 25 minutes,” which retains about 45%. That’s higher than the 40% for a stirred dish simmered for 15 minutes, because stirring distributes the alcohol across more surface area and exposes it to heat more evenly. A splash of wine poured over a roast and left sitting retains more than the same amount stirred into a sauce.
Even storing a dish overnight without heating it removes some alcohol. An uncooked marinade left in the refrigerator overnight still retains about 70% of its original ethanol, likely through slow evaporation at room temperature before refrigeration and absorption into the food.
What This Means in Practice
For most people, the alcohol left in a cooked dish is too small an amount per serving to cause intoxication. A cup of wine at around 12% ABV, simmered into a stew for two hours and divided among six servings, leaves each serving with roughly the alcohol equivalent of a fraction of a teaspoon of pure ethanol. You’d be hard pressed to measure that on a breathalyzer.
But trace amounts can still matter for specific groups. People in recovery from alcohol use disorder may want to avoid even small exposures, for both physiological and psychological reasons. Certain medications interact with even minimal alcohol. And for young children, whose body weight is low, a per-serving amount that’s negligible for an adult represents a proportionally larger dose. For anyone in these categories, the safest approach is to treat cooked alcohol as real alcohol, because it is.
If you’re cooking for a crowd and want to keep the flavor while eliminating as much alcohol as possible, the math is straightforward: simmer uncovered in a wide pan for at least two hours. Even then, a small residual amount will remain. The only way to guarantee zero alcohol is to leave it out entirely.