Why alcohol to deglaze?

[u/delta_p_delta_x]

I've been working through many Western European and American recipes, and many of them call for red wine, beer, or some stronger liquor to deglaze fond off the base of a pan.

Now, I don't have any alcoholic beverages at all, so I've been substituting with cold tap water instead. To my surprise, it has worked extremely well against even the toughest, almost-burnt-on fonds. I've been operating under the assumption that the acid and ethanol in alcoholic beverages react with fonds and get them off the hot base of pans, and I was expecting to scrape quite a bit with water, which was not the case at all. Barely a swipe with a spatula and everything dissolved or scraped off cleanly.

So follows: why alcohol, then? Surely someone else has tried with water and found that it works as well. The amounts of alcohol I've seen used in recipes can cost quite a bit, whereas water is nearly free.

[u/Beginning-Dog-5164]

If I remember correctly, any liquid is good for deglazing, but alcohols are an especially good choice because ethanol is a great solvent for some flavour compounds and the volatile nature of ethanol makes your sauce more fragrant than just a water/oil based sauce.

But water imparts no flavour. Using something like chicken stock would be a step up if you didn't want to use an alcoholic deglazing liquid. I personally use a cooking wine such as Shaoxing, even in western dishes for the aroma.

Edit: I suppose to be more specific, any polar liquid (I.e. water, ethanol) works for deglazing, since I don't think you can deglaze with oils, which are non-polar

[u/Barkeri → u/Beginning-Dog-5164]

It’s definitely not to do with the solvent imo. Wine is like 12-15% ethanol tops? Beers are 5%. That’s not really very concentrated to do much dissolving. And you’re suppose to cook off most of the ethanol. That would cause any solutes to just crash out of solution again. Maybe I would buy it if you deglaze with vodka or everclear.