The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

remove it. Which is to say, in order to remove all of
the alcohol from a pot, you need to boil it down to
nearly nothing.
So, to avoid an overly boozy sauce, the best thing
to do is to add your wine or liquor first and allow it
to reduce significantly before adding your remaining
liquids to dilute the small amount of alcohol
remaining.
By the way, for those of you who worry about the
small amount of alcohol present in a finished dish:
you needn’t. As long as you properly reduce the
wine before adding the remaining liquids, the amount
of alcohol in the final product is less than you’ll find
in the average loaf of yeast-leavened bread!