What’s The Best Wine To Pair With Chicken?
Settling down at the end of a day for a nice meal can be just what the doctor ordered. Even if you aren’t the best cook and just want to enjoy something simple, the right drink will pair with your food to create an entirely unique dining experience.
In particular, the right wine can complement a wide array of dishes.
We want to highlight some of the best ways you can enjoy a chicken-centered meal with the proper accompanying wine. While you can really drink any wine you want with chicken, there are certain combinations and pairings that just seem to work.
Once we dive into what wines work with what flavors, we will look at some ways you can cook chicken to be the best match with a nice wine.
Let’s first start by understanding the science of why the right wine is so important.
The Importance Of The Right Wine Pairing
When looking to get the most out of any meal, it is very rare that the only element in the meal is the meat itself. A nice piece of chicken can invoke many great flavors and tastes, but it won’t stand alone if not met with a nice complement.
Many people think that you can just pair any wine with any food, and it will taste better, but that is rarely the case.
A food like chicken, with its rich flavors and texture, requires a special type of drink to complement the meal. When looking to make any meal taste as good as possible, you need to make sure you are choosing the right wine for the job.
You can now get wine delivered right to your door, so there has never been a better time to try out some new pairings. We hope this list helps give you some inspiration in the kitchen to make any chicken dish shine.
Best Wine For Particular Chicken Flavors
In general, the way that you prepare your chicken is going to affect exactly which wine will pair best with it. Read on to learn more about what the best pairing is for you.
Wine Pairings for Traditional Chicken Dishes
Many people have fond memories of growing up at home with dinner that often resembles the classic grilled or sautéed chicken with the accompanying vegetables. These dishes have some of the richest and earthy flavors you can get from chicken and don’t use any added flavorings to get in the way of the chicken flavor. In many people’s opinions, the best wine pairing for any simplistic chicken dish is a nice glass of chardonnay.
This wine pairs beautifully with the rich tones of the chicken by providing an extra bit of kick to the natural sweetness found within the chicken flavor. A bottle of chardonnay adds a hint of oaky flavors to the chicken while also providing subtle hints of sweetness that make even the simplest of chickens get an entirely new personality.
A sauvignon blanc is also something to try out when pairing chicken dishes with a nice wine. The nature of this wine works very well with lighter cuts of chicken and also helps bring some more excitement to those otherwise boring greens that can feel lackluster with a more basic chicken recipe.
Wine Pairings for Seasoned Chicken Dishes
A little seasoning or sweetness added to an otherwise basic chicken can really bring the flavors to life and make the entire meal more exciting. To pair a wine with this new blend of flavors, you want to try and find some different wines to match the different seasonings you use.
Many people like their chicken with a little bit of kick from some pepper or chili elements, and there is a wine for that. What we think would pair nicely is a wine with a sweeter profile and some fruity elements to help counteract the power of the spice in the chicken.
A wine that would bring some nice balance to the seasoned meal would be a light Moscato to balance the chicken flavors.
In many areas, a seasoned chicken can be cooked with more style with the likes of a great barbequed chicken, offering a fun and exciting meal for many.
Despite the sweetness of a meal like barbecued chicken, pairing it with a wine such as a Chenin Blanc would offer an added layer of freshness to the meal without overbearing into the territory of sweetness that would interfere with the chicken’s flavors.
Wine Pairings for Chicken With A Cream Base
When most people think chicken and wine, they picture a beautifully prepared chicken dish that is accented with a cream that really puts the flavors over the top.
You can think of things like chicken casseroles and a sautéed chicken dish that utilizes various sauces and creams to help the chicken become even more moist and flavorful.
Depending on the nature of the creams and sauces used to assist the chicken’s flavors, you can go in many directions with your wine choices. On one end of the spectrum, we have the ever-popular mushroom-based sauces that are commonly paired with chicken. The very robust and earthy nature of these sauces makes this dish somewhere where you can introduce even a nice red wine to help the flavors come to life.
Alternatively, we see certain dishes like curry utilizing sauces in a direction to add some real kick to the chicken flavors. These dishes that are based on a heavy sauce with plenty of spice are paired nicely with a lighter wine like Riesling or a Moscato.
Best Cooking Styles For Wine Pairings
Believe it or not, it’s more than just the flavorings. The physical way that you cook your chicken can affect what wine will best pair with it as well, from roasting to sautéing.
Roasting
When looking to create a chicken dish based on the merits of the chef, you want the dish to be as simple as possible. Something like a roast chicken may seem easy to cook but cooking it well and preserving the rich flavors of a chicken creates an entirely different dining experience.
A good roast preserves both rich flavors and tenderness that are practically begging to be paired with a nice wine.
A nice and rich white wine would be perfect for enjoying with a well-roasted chicken as the lighter flavors of the wine interact with the darker meat flavors in a special way. Something like a rose or chardonnay provides a simple yet welcome flavor to any roasted bird.
Sautéed
Sautéing a piece of meat like chicken allows even more moisture and flavor to enter into the dish. Chicken is already flavorful and moist meat when cooked right, so the addition of preparing it by using a sauté method only further helps the meal come to life.
Many people choose to sauté their chicken with wine-based sauce to get those flavors into the chicken without even needing to take a drink. If you want to enjoy a nice glass of wine on the side of a sautéed chicken, you have a wide array of choices as you can really determine the best way to pair a wine and sauté combination.
Accented Sauces
Our last favorite way to cook chicken to pair with a nice wine is to use certain accent sauces that help bring the chicken and wine to the forefront of the meal. Unlike sautéing chicken, using an accent sauce in many ways sets your dish up for a wine pairing as it provides new flavors for the wine to interact with.
If your sauce is earthy and more natural in flavor, counteract that with a fruitier wine. When looking to use a more exotic sauce pairing that offers some added ingredients and an element of heat, look for wines to counteract that intensity.
