Cooking with Beer E-Book

Mark Dredge

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 186

Beschreibung

Over 65 delicious recipes using beer as a key ingredient. A beer with your food is a great thing. But what about beer in your food? It's an even better thing! The next step for any beer lover is to try using beer as an ingredient, and that's where COOKING WITH BEER comes in. Self-confessed beer geek Mark Dredge has combined two of his passions - great brews and delicious food - to come up with over 65 awesome recipes using beer as a key component. Every occasion is covered, from lazy hangover brunches featuring a beer-cured bacon sandwich and Hefeweizen French toast to tasty main meals like Tripel Pulled Pork and desserts including a must-try Carrot Cake made with a Double IPA. If you really want to go to town, the Ultimate section has meal ideas where every element involves beer in some way - beer pizza anyone? And of course there is a selection of beer snacks that you can enjoy with a well-earned pint in your hand.

Leseprobe

COOKING WITH

BEER

MARK DREDGE

COOKING WITH

BEER

USE LAGERS, IPAS, WHEAT BEERS, STOUTS, AND MORE TO CREATE OVER 65 DELICIOUS RECIPES

Published in 2016 by Dog 'n' Bone Books

An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields341 E 116th St

London WC1R 4BWNew York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Mark Dredge 2016

Design and photography © Dog ’n’ Bone Books 2016

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

eISBN: 978 1 782495 02 4

ISBN: 978 1 909313 89 7

Printed in China

Editor: Caroline West

Designer: Eoghan O’Brien

Photographer: Alex Luck (except page 131 by Peter Cassidy)

Stylist: Luis Peral

Home economist: Laura Urschel

Commissioning editor: Pete Jorgensen

In-house design assistant: Kerry Lewis

Art director: Sally Powell

Production controller: Gordana Simakovic

Publishing manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

USING THIS BOOK

I’ve tried to make these recipes as simple as possible. I’m not a trained chef; I’m just a decent home cook and I’m assuming you’re the same—someone who likes good beers and good food, and enjoys combining these in the kitchen. If you’re ever unclear on exact measurements or ingredients, then here is a simple guide:

• If you see “1 bottle of beer” listed in the Ingredients, this means a regular-sized bottle—either the American 12fl oz (355ml) or the more worldly 11.2fl oz (330ml). The 25ml liquid difference between these won’t make a difference to that recipe unless stated otherwise.

• I usually suggest a beer style to cook with and not an exact brand. Beers can vary greatly within their styles, so I’ve tried to give a tasting profile alongside the beer style (very aromatic Pale Ale with low bitterness, for example).

• All spoon measurements are level, unless stated otherwise. All eggs are US extra large (UK large) and ideally free-range. Milk is full fat or whole. Cream is heavy (double), unless stated.

• I always use sea salt crystals and never table salt in cooking. That’s just a personal preference. If you’re curing or brining, then always use sea salt or kosher salt.

• A recipe will often call for, say, “1–3 fresh chili peppers.” This is because everyone has a different heat tolerance and preference. Simply make your own choice as to how much to add. Keeping the chili seeds is, of course, optional.

• The recipes give Imperial measurements (i.e. 2fl oz of beer, 1 cup sugar, 375°F) and their metric equivalents (e.g. 60ml beer, 200g sugar, 190°C). I’ve done my best to ensure these conversions are as accurate as possible. Be sure not to mix your measurements, choose either the Imperial or metric and stick to it.

HOW TO STERILIZE A JAR

Recipes such as the Hoppy Peach Hot Sauce (page 40) and Weizen Ketchup (page 34) are stored in jars, which will need sterilizing first. To sterilize a jar, wash the glass and lid in hot, soapy water and place upside-down in a 250°F/120°C/Gas ½ oven to dry for around 30 minutes, then remove. If you are using a Kilner jar with a rubber neck, remove this and don’t put it in the oven. Where appropriate, fill the jars when still warm.

A BASIC BEER BRINE

I use a brine in many recipes and there’s a simple and consistent base brine for all of these: in a sealable container, combine a bottle of beer, the equivalent amount of water (typically enough to cover whatever you’re brining—if in doubt use less water than beer), 3 tablespoons of salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar, plus additional flavors (e.g. spices, citrus, herbs). Leave for 8–24 hours.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Using Beer in the Kitchen

Pairing Beer and Food

A Guide to Beer Styles

Top Tips for Cooking With Beer

CHAPTER 1 BREAKFAST

Coffee Stout Pancakes

Beer-cured Bacon Sandwich

Weissbier Frittata

Hefeweizen French Toast

Beer Brunch Muffins

Beer Beans on Toast

Shandies and Mixers

CHAPTER 2 SNACKS AND STARTERS

Loaded Pale Ale Potato Skins

Beer-baked Fries

Orval Rillettes

Snakebite Pickles

Four Great Beer Salad Dressings

Beer Hot Wings

Scotch Eggs

Beer Chili Buns

Mexican Lager and Corn Soup

Curried Butternut Squash and Porter Soup

Sour Beer Ceviche

Witbier-cured Salmon

Mini Beef and Beer Pies

Beer Fish Finger Sandwich

Hopcorn Chicken

CHAPTER 3 MAINS AND MORE

Boilermaker Ribs

Pilsner Meatloaf

Triple Tripel Pork

Vietnamese Saison Pork

Spicy Witbier Fish Burgers

Saison Salmon

Belgian Beef Brisket

Black Lager Yakiudon

Dunkel Weizen and Star Anise Pork Belly

Lager and Lime Chicken Tacos

Beer Meatballs

Beer Bolognese

Pork Cheeks in Cider

Beer Pasta

Duvel and Anchovy Sauce for Pasta

Beer Chicken Parma

Kriek Lamb

Toad in the Hole

Smoked Beer Pulled Pork Tacos

IPA and Cheddar Cheese Barley Risotto

Saison-spiked Fish Laksa

Leftover Lager Curry

Bock, Blue Cheese, and Vegetable Cottage Pie

Vegetable Crumble

CHAPTER 4 ULTIMATE MEALS

The Ultimate Beer Burger

The Ultimate Beer Cheese Sauce

The Ultimate Beer Pizza

The Ultimate Beer Quesadilla

CHAPTER 5 BAKING

Classic Beer Bread

Beer Brioche Buns

IPA and Honey Cornbread

Beer Crackers

Beer Soda Bread

Soft Beer Pretzel Bites

CHAPTER 6 SWEET THINGS

Double IPA Carrot Cake

Stout Chocolate Banana Pudding

Abbot’s Apple Pie

Grapefruit IPA Pudding

PBJ Crumble Cakes

The Best Beer Ice Creams

Oktoberfest Cheesecake

Saison Lemon Meringue Pies

Framboise Lemon Cake

Chocolate Orange Double IPA Mousse

Dubbel Panna Cotta

Index

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

I was standing around a scummy hob in my university house the first time I added beer to something I was cooking. I was drinking a bottle of lager while making a risotto; I didn’t have any wine, so I just used beer instead. It tasted good.

I had no idea that those few splashes of cheap lager would lead to this book a decade later. Back then I was just cooking with what was literally to hand and adapting a recipe by using a different ingredient (which also happened to be an ingredient I preferred to wine). In the ten years since I left university, I’ve cooked with every kind of beer there is, using it in more ways than I can remember, with some of the dishes tasting great and some tasting incredible. The best thing about this approach to cooking is being able to take a beer I love and transform it into something delicious to eat. There’s a wonderful alchemy in that.

Today, cooking with beer is growing in popularity around the world, assisted by our increasing knowledge of beer and food and a general culinary curiosity that naturally prompts us to use the huge variety of beers now available in the kitchen. Countless bars and brewpubs use beer in different dishes; Michelin-starred restaurants cook with beer; and there are restaurants specializing in beer-infused food. There are also websites and YouTube channels dedicated to beer cooking, and it’s going way beyond old classics, such as pies and stews, and creating a new evolution of what beer cuisine is and what it can be. And that’s exciting.

However, we can’t look too far forward before having a look backward, and checking out those classic dishes that have been cooked for generations, where the traditional drinking nations all have a few dishes that use beer. The Belgian cuisine à la bière is the most prolific in terms of cooking with beer, incorporating it in a range of recipes, including soups, sauces, pâtés, mussels, carbonnade, and puddings—these also use all their many types of beer, from sour cherry beers to lively golden ales to dark, strong monastery brews. In Britain and Ireland, there’s pies, stews, chutneys, cakes, and batter for the famous fried fish. In Germany and Czech Republic, there’s sausages in beer and braises, plus sauces to go with hunks of meat. And these are just the few recipes still around today. If we look back a century or two, or even five or six, it’d be very different because beer was undoubtedly more prevalent in cooking then. In the past, beer was predominantly homebrewed, so it was in the kitchen next to the food—in many ways it was a food in its own right, something with nutritional and caloric value, as well as an ingredient that contributed flavor at a time when people didn’t have stacked spice racks or the kinds of sauces and condiments we routinely reach for today.

“There’s not a huge amount of historical stuff, but that, I suspect, is because cooking with ale/beer was so natural that nobody bothered to record it,” says beer historian Martyn Cornell. The few older recipes are interesting: stews that were authentic Neolithic-style dishes; 12th-century recipes for stewing fish in ale; recipes using up soured beer in place of vinegars and in pickling liquids. In Beer and Vittels Elizabeth Craig writes: “In Georgian and Victorian days beer was freely used in the kitchen.” There are also many old Belgian books dedicated to the topic. But, in a way, none of this really matters now because newer brewers and chefs aren’t looking at old braises. Instead, they’re looking at contemporary cooking, they’re using current food influences, and they’re developing them with beer.

We have limitless options and possibilities when cooking with beer, whether it’s a simple stir fry or an impressive dessert. What makes it particularly interesting is the huge range of beer types available and the flavors and qualities they can give a dish—a smoked Porter that tastes like bonfired bacon; treacly Imperial Stouts; raisin and port-like Quadrupels; IPAs with incredible tropical fruit and citrus aromas; sour beers like a squeeze of lemon juice. We can then decide how to use those beers and work out what they might give to a recipe: the smoky Porter makes an amazing pizza dough and gives a savory depth in a brine for chicken; Quadrupel makes an incredible ice cream, but can also add sweetness to bread; and the IPA can transform a chocolate mousse with citrusy bitterness, but also add malt complexity to a mac ’n’ cheese. No other liquid family can offer so much in the kitchen.

I love cooking with beer because it has such enormous breadth, depth, and versatility as an ingredient, working in so many different ways and in so many different recipes. I love how you can add your favorite beer to a dish or adapt favorite recipes by including a beer—now who wouldn’t be interested in doing that? This book features some of my favorite methods for cooking with beer; I’ve generally overlooked the classics and sought to find new ways of using beer in the kitchen.

USING BEER IN THE KITCHEN

Beer is one of the simplest ingredients to cook with. If a recipe includes a liquid—water, wine, stock, or milk—then you can use beer instead. You can use beer for baking, brining, and braising. You can put it in a quick pasta sauce or a slow stew, or use it in a dressing or cake frosting. Beer is also an incredibly versatile liquid, with a huge range of flavors and tastes, meaning it can contribute a bready sweetness, chocolatey richness, tropical-fruit freshness, or lemony acidity, and so much more.

Although effective and versatile, beer is also a challenging ingredient to cook with. It’s essentially flavored and fermented water—over 90 percent of what’s in your beer glass is water. The grain used in the brewing process leaves color, richness, and some flavor. The hops are beer’s aromatic seasonings and can be earthy, floral, citrusy, herbal, tropical, and more, but they are also bitter, which is often a negative in the kitchen. The alcohol is hidden from sight but brought out by cooking, which is a good thing, as it gives the food greater depth and complex fullness of flavor. The yeast in beer can give a range of qualities, from peppery and fruity through to sour, but that often doesn’t influence the food. While beer might be a drink that’s full of flavor, trying to get those flavors into your food requires some skill.

Cooking with beer doesn’t always turn out as you might expect. For example, imagine an IPA that smells like grapefruit and mango. It’d be amazing to capture that aroma as a flavor, but it doesn’t work like that because the aroma is the first thing to go when you cook with it. Lager, despite its relative simplicity, can give a really good depth to a dish, that hard-to-define alcohol quality that enriches food. You might think that reducing the beer in a pan might intensify all the flavors into a thick beer syrup, but that rarely happens and, instead, you boil away all the nice aromas and kick out the bitterness (dark, strong Belgian beers are a nice exception to this, though you still need to add sugar). The truth is that you never quite know what qualities will pull through when cooking with a beer, but there are tricks and tips on page 15 to help you out.

This book is all about cooking with beer. If you think that’s a wasteful use of a delicious drink, then you’re probably missing the point of what this book is setting out to achieve. In many cases, you can use an affordable bottle of beer that costs the same as a chicken breast or bag of carrots—you don’t have to cook with rare or expensive beers (although, of course, you can use them if you wish). Often the recipes only call for a small amount of liquid, leaving the rest for you to drink, which is always fantastic because you really can’t beat cooking a delicious meal with a beer in your hand.

PAIRING BEER AND FOOD

Most of the recipes in this book come with suggestions for beers to drink with the dish. This is my approach to beer and food pairing. (For more on this, check out my bookBeer and Food, which goes into more detail.)

BRIDGE

Think about forming a bridge between the beer and the food by connecting similar flavors or qualities. For example, try Belgian Witbier, which is infused with coriander seed and citrus, with a Southeast Asian curry; the aniseed and fragrant spicy flavors of a Belgian Dubbel with a Moroccan lamb tagine; a Porter with a chargrilled steak; smoked trout with a Rauchbier; or Pale Ale’s citrus and resinous flavors with a garlic, lemon, and herb chicken. The bridge of flavors naturally draws these elements together and helps them to enhance each other.

BALANCE

There are times when food can be powerful in both flavor and texture, and adding an equally dominant beer to the dish can overpower everything. In this case, aim to balance the flavors or highlight different qualities or ingredients in subtle ways. You’re most likely to do this when the food has an extremity of flavor—often fat, salt, or chili heat. Hefeweizen with spicy Thai fishcakes; refreshing Pale Lager with an Indian curry; Sweet Stout with jerk chicken; Pale Ale with a cheeseburger; sour beer with smoked mackerel. The food can also work to balance bitterness in a beer: fries or potato chips with IPA or strong cheese with Double IPA.

BOOST

Sometimes you’ll combine beer with food and they work together in an unexpected way, boosting the qualities and thus your enjoyment of both—typically, you’ll get more qualities out of drink and dinner than before. A sour cherry beer brings out the fruitier flavors in dark chocolate (that’s the classic go-to boost pairing); carrot cake and Double IPA are amazing together; a boozy, raisiny Barley Wine is like a sweet chutney with blue cheese; smoke and citrus set each other off, whether it’s barbecued meat with Pale Ale or Rauchbier with grilled salmon and lemon; while sometimes it’s a condiment which can help the combo, with the best example being steak and horseradish with Oatmeal Stout, where together the beer and sauce enhance the meat’s flavor.

LOCAL

Look at local food and the most popular beer styles produced in the region and you’ll find they typically work together naturally. British Bitter with the Cheddar cheese in a ploughman’s lunch; Californian-brewed Pale Ale with fish tacos; Munich Helles with a fresh pretzel; Italian Pilsner with pizza; Japanese Rice Lager with yakitori; or Trappist Ales paired with the monastery’s cheeses.

INTENSITY AND TEXTURE

This is an important consideration because you want to match the intensity of a dish with the intensity of a beer (think Pilsner versus Belgian Tripel), while also thinking about the textures that each brings (think lively carbonation versus smooth, full-bodied beers). You wouldn’t open a fragrant, effervescent Saison to go with gooey chocolate brownies because the beer would taste horrible with the rich sweetness of the cake. And you wouldn’t put a plate of delicate charcuterie with a glass of thick, strong Imperial Stout because it’d be like pouring chocolate syrup over the meat. But put the delicate Saison with the cured meat and they share a similar subtle, spicy depth, just as the brownie and Stout are both chewy and chocolatey.

THE FIVE TASTES

The five tastes interact with each other in interesting ways, so it helps to understand how they work when combining beer and food. Umami is a rich savory taste (think soy sauce, cured meat, aged cheese). I think beer has an inherently umami edge as a result of the malting process, plus certain characteristics of the yeast. This is very important because umami naturally enhances the flavor of food and gives it more depth, meaning that beer can also act as a flavor booster. Bitter beer can be softened by salty and fatty foods. Sweet beer likes either very savory foods or needs to be drunk with an equally sweet food. Sourness is refreshing and quenching, and works well with salt and fatty richness. Salt is great with beer because the drink is refreshing against it.

CHILI HEAT

Chili heat is an irritation that gives a burning sensation. A highly carbonated beer will aggravate that irritation. Similarly, bitterness will poke at the burn and make it unpleasant, so try to drink smoother, sweeter, and softer beers with spicy food. Adding a cooling ingredient, such as yogurt or avocado, or fragrant herbs like mint, to the dish can also help. Also consider mustard, horseradish, wasabi, pepper, and ginger, because they are pungent and powerful like chili.

A GUIDE TO BEER STYLES

PALE LAGER

The most dominate beer type in the world, the Pale Lager category is broader than most drinkers realize. It starts at the bottom with bland mass-market brews and can reach all the way to complex and extraordinary beers. German Helles and Czech Pilsners are the classics; Helles tends to be softer, rounder, and less bitter than the drier, snappier Pilsners. Modern versions can use hops to give more aroma and bitterness—these tend to be better for drinking than cooking, as the delicate aromas are lost in the cooking process.

DRINK WITH: Classic Central European beer food like pretzels and grilled meats. Also great with spicy food and Asian curries, plus salads and picnic foods such as quiches or simple sandwiches.

IN THE KITCHEN: Great for beer brines. You can also use it to bake delicate doughs (especially pretzels and pizza), or turn a can of lager into a curry feast (see Leftover Lager Curry, on page 94). The better lagers give more complexity and depth, especially when slow-cooked in a stew or goulash, but you can equally add a can of crap lager to turn the dish into something delicious, which is a brilliant use of beer that you don’t want to drink.

DARK LAGER

Until the middle of the 19th century, all lagers would’ve been dark. Today these remain a traditional beer type in Central Europe. The roasted grains that turn these beers dark give a toasty, roasty, and nutty depth to the drink, making it a great beer to go with food as it shares the subtle qualities of caramelized and cooked food (think grilled steak and fresh toast). Dunkels tend to be more subtle in the dark malts, as if you’ve got a Helles dusted with cocoa and toast, while Schwarzbier is darker, drier, and roastier.

DRINK WITH: Asian noodles are excellent, German and Czech stews like goulash work well, steak and roasted meat are great. Middle Eastern salads and grilled meat (think kofte) are also good.

IN THE KITCHEN: Dark lagers are really good to cook with. They work well in Asian dishes, in slow-braised meat dishes (classic Central-European-style), and in brines for steak or pork, as they’ll add a depth of meatiness. Try in tomato-based pasta sauces for extra oomph (for example, see Beer Meatballs and Tomato Sauce with Spaghetti, on page 78).

WHEAT BEER

There are two main types of Wheat Beer: Belgian and German. Belgian Witbier is typically brewed using coriander seed and orange peel, and has a peppery, spicy finish; German Hefeweizen is a bit sweeter and rounder, giving banana and bubble gum aromas with some peppery, clove-like depth. You might see American versions too, which tend to be smooth, yet dry, and without much yeast aroma but often plenty of hops. They all share a relatively full body and smooth texture, are low in bitterness, and high in yeast-produced aromas. The German style extends out to include Dunkelweizen, a dark wheat beer, and Weizenbock, a strong Hefeweizen.

DRINK WITH: Good with spicy foods, having the ability to balance heat by wrapping spice in smoothness, where Southeast Asian is especially good with all types; Witbier is best with more aromatic dishes, Hefeweizen with creamier dishes. Mexican is also a good match.

IN THE KITCHEN: Definitely good in the kitchen. I frequently bake with Hefeweizen, so try this in pretzels (see Soft Beer Pretzel Bites with Beer Mustard, on page 118), doughs, and cakes. The low bitterness means it works well in Asian food or to give an interesting flavor to brines. Witbier is very nice in Southeast Asian curries or fish cakes.

SAISON

Saisons can differ greatly, though we usually expect a dry beer with a firm and substantial, but not sweet, body, plus some yeast-derived aromas such as banana, lemon peel, or peppery funk. Some might be sub 4.0% ABV, while others will be over 6.0% ABV. They might be sour or bitter, while newer versions getting lots of late-hop additions are very fruity and aromatic. Bière de Garde, a member of the extended Farmhouse Beer family, is similar to Saison, but sweeter, stronger, and fuller-bodied.