A culinary mishap

I may have made a bit of a culinary blunder. I was innocently trying to make a beef stew, kind of freestyling the recipe, having consulted Saint Delia beforehand and decided none of her many options quite matched what I had in mind and in fridge. I merrily poured in a good glug of exhibit A, below, and added some chopped onions to sauté:

I thought this was some kind of vegetable oil - after all, it's the right colour, right type of container, right size bottle, right kind of price in the supermarket. I didn't understand the characters on the label, but how much is there to understand about vegetable oil?

Then my onions turned black. If I had been able to smell, I could have instantly understood the problem, but as my last post outlined, I have a stinking cold and consequently have lost my sense of smell more or less entirely until my nose unblocks itself. I couldn't understand what was happening, except that the 'oil' was a fair bit thinner and less viscous than I expected...

It was only when I turned the bottle round that I saw this:

I had, in fact, poured alcoholic mirin rice wine into the pan. Luckily, the stove did not erupt into a blazing inferno, although the onions looked scorched beyond recognition. I lost almost all hope for the stew. The lesson for today, kids, is never to forget to check your ingredients for alcohol content. Booze is good, but only in the right circumstances...

*****

Postscript: As far as I could taste (not very much), the stew seemed to be fine; Dad claimed it was nice too, though he may just have been trying to be kind...