The Secret Ingredient You Need To Add To Your Next Bouillabaisse

A simple homemade bouillabaisse is often enhanced with a splash of booze — usually white wine, and sometimes the anise-scented liqueur pastis, too. But next time you're making the fish and seafood dish, it's worth trying another type of alcohol: Cognac. To find out why this particular French brandy works so well, Food Republic consulted Molly Horn, chief mixologist and spirits educator at Total Wine & More.

Rich and fruity Cognac is a natural partner for all sorts of fishy flavors. "Due to the nuanced, complex nature of Cognac in general, it works very nicely with delicate seafood, from raw bar favorites like oysters and citrus-marinated shrimp cocktail (skip the cocktail sauce) to buttery lobster and herbaceous seafood stew," explained Horn. "In fact, the famous French dish bouillabaisse can be beautifully elevated with a homemade stock simmered with Cognac!"

Fish is the star of the Provençal stew, and though exact ingredients vary according to availability, it often features around five different varieties of fish and other seafood. Shellfish and crustaceans go particularly well with deep and complex Cognac, and since the stew tends to contain ingredients such as crayfish (aka crawfish or crawdads, depending on where you're from), lobster, or shrimp, it pairs beautifully. And it's versatile, too: Not only can Cognac enrich the stock for extra depth of flavor and add balance, but it also makes a great option for deglazing the pan during cooking, and it works well if you want to try flambeing the dish, too.

Cognac is a wonderful ingredient when cooking — it's the fruity liquor Ina Garten uses to boost beef stew, for example — and you don't need much of the robustly flavored liquor for great results. When adding it to your bouillabaisse stock, as drinks expert Molly Horn recommended, try just three tablespoons in a stock made with five cups of water (or a mix of water and chicken broth) along with seafood shells and vegetables. Once it's simmered for a couple of hours, you'll have a rich base for bouillabaisse, and any unused shellfish stock can be frozen for future dishes.

Deglazing with Cognac and white wine once you've sauteed the vegetables is a great way to release extra flavors from the pan for a richer broth. Or you can flambe the vegetables for your soup base — just pour over a half cup of Cognac, set it alight, and add wine, tomatoes, garlic, saffron, and fish broth once the flames have disappeared before simmering.

While Cognac is not the same as brandy as it's distilled from specific grapes, it can similarly be used to enhance many seafood dishes beyond bouillabaisse. Add a splash to sauteed shrimp with garlic, butter, white wine, and lemon, and serve it with pasta. Mix a tablespoon into the creamy sauce for lobster Thermidor baked with Gruyère. Or try it in a seafood bisque or chowder for a luxurious depth of flavor.