By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter
Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. Steak and ale pie is one of many ways to cook with beer.
Man can’t live on beer alone (though I have known a couple of guys who gave it the old college try). We all need good, hearty food to sustain us through our busy Alaska lives. As an accompaniment to that good food, nothing is better than a good craft beer, hopefully locally produced. But pairing beer with foods is a topic for another day. Today I want to talk about cooking with beer.
Beer is a marvelously versatile ingredient in cooking. Want to lighten up a batter for chicken or halibut? Add some beer to it. Need a quick sauce for a sautéed or roasted dish? Just deglaze the pan with beer. Beer is a godsend in the kitchen, with all kinds of uses.
What sort of beer should you use for cooking? Well, the first thing to remember is that cooking tends to concentrate flavors, so avoid using an overly bitter beer. While that super-hoppy Double IPA may taste great straight out of the glass, boil it down in a sauce and you’ll end up with something too bitter to swallow. It’s typically better to use beers that emphasize malt sweetness, rather than hop bitterness, when cooking.
OK, let’s get down to brass tacks. To lighten a batter, I’d use a pale or lightly hopped lager or ale. If you’re looking to deglaze a pan, you should match the beer to the style of dish; one with a delicate flavor needs a more delicate beer, as opposed to a more intensely spiced or flavored dish, which requires a more intense beer. Either way, stay away from overly bitter ones.
Wheat beers make excellent steaming or poaching liquids; bratwurst cooked in Weissbier is a German classic. Beer is also a great basis for a marinade; I recommend using something dark and hearty, like a porter or brown ale.
Most soups and gravies can be greatly improved by adding some beer — beer and cheese soup, anyone? Dark, malty brews are the key here, like a sweet stout, a doppelbock or Scotch ale.
Finally, don’t forget dessert. Chocolate cakes and pastries made with sweet stouts or doppelbocks are extra rich and delicious, and fruit dishes can often be made more interesting with the addition of a fruit beer. If all else fails, add a scoop of ice cream to a glass of Imperial Stout, and you’ve got an instant beer float.
Those are some general guidelines, but if you’re a bit intimidated at getting started, there have been plenty of beer cookbooks written. A good one to start with is “Cooking with Alaskan Beer,” published by the Alaskan Brewing Company and available on their Web site for $19.95.
It contains 101 recipes, focusing on classic local Alaska ingredients, each cooked with one of their beers. It’s nicely printed and spiral bound, full of delicious, easy-to-make recipes that showcase how much beer has to offer when it comes to improving the flavor of food.
I don’t want to leave off without giving you an actual recipe to try, so here is my lovely wife Elaine’s recipe for Steak and Ale Pie. We both became addicted to this traditional English dish while living in London.
Ingredients:
1 lb stew beef
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 beef bouillon cube
1 Pillsbury Pie Crust
2 cups of water
12 to 16 oz of beer (Stout or Imperial Stout)
Directions: In a cast iron skillet, brown the beef, onions and garlic in a little olive oil. Add the water, bouillon cube and beer. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook for three hours. Uncover the skillet, thicken with equal parts cornstarch and water, then cover it with the pie crust and bake in a 350-degree F oven until brown. Serve with a side of green peas and potatoes (mashed, roasted or fried). Makes four servings.
As for the brand of beer to use, we started using Guinness, and then switched to Murphy’s Irish Stout. Now we use my own homebrewed Imperial Stout, but I’d think a stout from any of our fine local breweries would likely serve as well. The Breakfast Beer from Kenai River Brewing might do an especially fine job, since it is a milk stout and therefore sweeter than the typical dry stout.
It doesn’t really matter which one you choose, just so long as it’s one you like. Just be sure to get enough to have plenty left over to drink with the finished product.
Whether you use our recipe, one you find in a cookbook or one you make up all on your own, you should really give cooking with beer a try. I guarantee you will be amazed at the difference the addition of a little good beer can make.
Until next time, cheers!
Bill Howell is a home brewer and teaches a beer appreciation class at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus. Drinking on the Kenai appears the first Wednesday of the month in the Redoubt Reporter.
