6

Hey. I'm in Vermont. We have lots of apple ciders and lots of amazing apples (let me recommend this year's lady apples...bet on 2010 Cider! )

I've been roasting local chickens, and then deglasing with apple cider, but the cider is too sweet. Any suggestions for how to keep the cider, but make the dish more palatteable. Thanks.

hunterp
  • 163
  • 3

2 Answers2

12

You can cut the apple cider with some apple cider vinegar. Adding a couple tablespoons of cider vinegar to 1 cup of apple cider should do the trick.

You can also add a bit of mustard seed, whole or ground to give it some heat that can help combat the sweetness. I wouldn't add more than a pinch of ground mustard or a half tsp of whole seeds.

I use this exact glaze on pork roasts all the time, but I've never tried it on chicken. Let me know how it is.

hobodave
  • 38,350
  • 16
  • 145
  • 214
  • 1
    I have a similar pork recipe that uses dijon instead of mustard seed and adds a tiny bit of soy and some brown sugar, which is probably not necessary for such sweet cider. The resulting glaze is excellent. – justkt Dec 10 '10 at 13:50
  • @justkt: Yea, I usually use brown sugar too, but I omitted it from my suggestion for the same reason :) – hobodave Dec 10 '10 at 18:35
6

Use a dry cider instead. In Sweden we also have lots of great apples and cider, but I have yet to find a really dry local variety. If you can get dry English or French cider, go for that instead.

Henrik Söderlund
  • 2,261
  • 2
  • 14
  • 14
  • Good point, there's a wide variety of apple cider -- I like the stuff from one of the farmer's markets that's not overly sweet (and then I intentionally leave it for a while so it'll start to ferment), but as all ciders used different blends of apples, some are going to be sweet/dry/tart/etc. – Joe Dec 10 '10 at 16:59
  • 2
    I've discovered dry alcoholic cider....its way less sweet – hunterp Dec 12 '10 at 04:01