Cooking Sherry: What It Is and What to Buy Instead

Cooking sherry is a salted, preserved wine sold near the vinegar at the supermarket, and it is not the same thing as a real dry sherry. It’s convenient and lasts for months, but the salt ends up in your dish, and it won’t taste like a good Fino or Amontillado. Our advice for most recipes: buy a real dry sherry, or, if you already own cooking sherry, use it in savory dishes and cut the salt.

What cooking sherry is

The Spruce Eats describes the difference simply. Drinking sherry is sold with the liquor, alongside vermouth and Port. Cooking sherry sits in the grocery aisle with the vinegar, has a significant amount of salt added as a preservative, and is made from lower-quality wine to begin with.

MasterClass adds that it contains potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate, keeps for several months after opening, and has about 17% alcohol. It reports 180 milligrams of sodium per 2-tablespoon serving, and it names Holland House as one of the most popular brands. Check the label on your own bottle, since these numbers vary.

In the US, products like this are covered by the rule for salted wine. Under 27 CFR 24.215, salted wine is wine “not for beverage use” with at least 1.5 grams of salt per 100 milliliters, and TTB, the federal alcohol regulator, says this kind of treatment makes a wine unfit for drinking. Our guide to cooking wine explains how those rules work and what they mean for the label.

Cooking sherry vs real sherry

	Cooking sherry	Real dry sherry
What it is	Wine with salt and preservatives	Fortified wine from Spain’s Jerez region, dry styles with up to 5 g of sugar per liter
Added salt	Yes	No
Where it’s sold	Near vinegars and condiments	With wine and liquor
After opening	Several months, per MasterClass	Fino and Manzanilla up to about a week; most others up to 2 months, tightly corked in the fridge, per the Consejo Regulador
Works in desserts?	Not really: the salt gets in the way	Yes
Good to drink?	No	Yes

The real thing is regulated too. The Consejo Regulador, the official body for sherry, defines the dry styles and limits them to five grams of residual sugar per liter.

Note: MasterClass says opened sherry lasts only a few days. The Consejo Regulador’s figures are longer for most styles, so we go with those.

Which sherry to buy instead

When a recipe says “dry sherry”, it means a dry style of real sherry, not Cream. Here’s how we’d choose:

• Fino or Amontillado for most cooking. Serious Eats recommends these two in its sherry-braised chicken, describing them as dry, savory and nutty.
• Amontillado if you cook with it only now and then. Fino and Manzanilla are the most delicate once open, so an Amontillado gives you more time, about two months in the fridge by the Consejo’s figures. That’s our pick for a kitchen bottle.
• Skip sweet styles in savory food. Cream and Pedro Ximénez bring a lot of sugar. If a recipe asks for cream sherry and you have only dry, our sherry substitute guide has a simple fix.

We don’t name specific bottles here yet, because our picks need a published critic score and US prices checked at two or more stores, as explained in how we rate wine. Look for the style name and the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry or Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda designation on the label.

How to use cooking sherry if you have it

There’s no need to pour it away. MasterClass gives sensible advice for using it:

1. Use it in savory dishes. A hearty stew that needs salt can take it. Desserts can’t: if an apple pie or other sweet recipe calls for sherry, use a salt-free dry sherry.
2. Skip or cut the salt. With that much sodium per pour, season at the end, after you’ve tasted.
3. Start with a splash. Use only a little unless the recipe calls for more.
4. Let it simmer. It needs a little time in the pan to cook down.

We’d add one rule of our own: don’t use it in a reduction or a sauce you boil down hard. The water evaporates, the salt doesn’t, and it’s easy to overshoot.

Important: Cooking sherry is not alcohol-free, and cooking doesn’t remove all the alcohol. If someone at the table avoids alcohol, use one of the non-alcoholic options in our sherry substitute guide.

Recipes that call for sherry

Here are the places you’re most likely to meet it. For each, we’d reach for the real thing if you have it.

Braises and stews. Serious Eats’ sherry-braised chicken with chickpeas, chorizo and fennel uses ¾ cup of dry sherry (divided), with chicken stock as the braising liquid. With that much sherry in the pot, salted cooking sherry would be a poor idea: at the federal minimum, ¾ cup (about 180 milliliters) holds at least 2.7 grams of salt, by our calculation.

Soups and sauces. When a recipe adds a little sherry near the end, real sherry matters most in our view, since it isn’t cooked for long and its flavor stays front and center.

Chinese cooking. Dry sherry is the usual stand-in for Shaoxing rice wine, and The Spruce Eats specifically says dry sherry, not cooking sherry. See our Shaoxing wine guide for how the two compare.

If you need a replacement

• For cooking sherry: real dry sherry in the same amount, plus salt to taste.
• For real dry sherry, using cooking sherry: this works in savory dishes if you leave out most of the recipe’s salt. The Spruce Eats says it’s fine in savory cooking, but a drinking sherry is the better choice as a general rule.
• No sherry at all: The Spruce Eats suggests dry vermouth, dry Madeira, dry Marsala or a dry white wine. For amounts and an alcohol-free mix from America’s Test Kitchen, see our sherry substitute guide, and our white wine for cooking guide if you’re going that route.

Wine is for adults of legal drinking age (21 in the US). Cooking sherry isn’t meant for drinking.