With the highest percentage of alcohol of all brewed drinks, sake is a small but delicious accompaniment to a variety of foods. Knowing pair sake with food increases your enjoyment of both and is an impressive skill to use in planning a dinner party.
Instructions
1. Serve sake with mildly flavored and lightly spiced foods. Foods with strong flavors or spices and foods with a lot of hot peppers don't pair well with sake.
2. Match the flavor of the sake to the flavor of the food, or play up contrast in your sake pairing. Either approach yields delicious results, though matching flavors is easier. One way to match flavors is to purchase the sake first, taste it and build a menu around its flavor.
3. Consider the relative sweetness or dryness of the sake. A sweet sake pairs nicely with a creamy dish, while a dry sake goes well with a lighter sauce or a dish of grains and vegetables.
4. Think about the sake's acidity level. The higher the acidity, the better the sake pairs with an oily dish like tempura.
5. Pair sake that has a bitter or earthy tone with vegetable dishes to heighten vegetables' pleasantly bitter taste. Greens pair especially well with bitter sake. A smoked dish is also a good pairing for an earthy sake.
6. Experience the mouthfeel of the sake and choose food with a complementing mouthfeel. If the two don't match, the sake feels out of place. A sake with a grainy feel pairs well with more substantial foods, and a sake with a creamy feel pairs with fruit or with delicate or saucy foods.
7. Serve premium sake on its own or with a light salad or fruit meal. Heavier meals obscure its delicate flavor.
8. Experiment with the temperature of sake. You can serve sake chilled, at room temperature or warmed gently. Each temperature has a different overall effect.
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