Cooking With Beer, a practice that almost certainly enjoys as long a pedigree as cooking with wine, even if the former has been less celebrated in culinary circles. Almost any beverage can be incorporated into cooking, but beer has a number of unique qualities to offer in the kitchen. Most cultures that drink beer have at least a few recipes cooked with it, from the classic Irish beef and Guinness stew to beer-battered fish and Belgian waterzooi.
It is undoubted in Belgium that cooking with beer achieves its fullest flower, with an entire range of dishes enticingly dubbed cuisine à la bière. Although it was based on long-standing local traditions, cuisine à la bière was codified by Belgian master chef Raoul Morleghem in the 1950s, and his work was highly influential. Today, many of Belgium’s best restaurants feature beer-based dishes.
As with wine, the alcohol in beer will flash off during cooking. However, beer is not generally analogous to wine in the kitchen. Most beers have notably less acidity than wine does, and beer has hop bitterness as a complicating factor. One might hesitate to cook with very tannic wine, and very hoppy beer can be similarly difficult to work with. Hop bitterness can be broken down by cooking, but this generally requires at least 90 minutes of simmering or braising. Beers with a strong roast character can be used in cooking, but ought not to be concentrated in sauces because they can become very bitter. Used correctly, beer has much to add to cuisine across a wide range of cooking applications. Cooking can concentrate many of a beer’s flavors, and therefore it is always best to use beers that have good flavors in the first place. Beers that one does not wish to drink should probably be avoided in the kitchen as well.
Many beers can make the basis of fine marinades to add flavor to meat and poultry. British brown ales and Belgian dubbels, when combined with shallots, herbs, salt, pepper, and garlic, can make very good marinades for beer, pork, and lamb. After the meat is removed, the marinade can be strained and used to build sauces.
After something has been sautéed or roasted in a pan or pot, concentrated, caramelized bits of the food remain stuck to the bottom of the cooking vessel. When dissolved by beer poured into the still-hot pan, those caramelized flavors become an excellent basis for sauces. Use sweeter beers such as doppelbocks if maltier, richer flavors are preferred, but acidic beers such as gueuze can work as well.
Beer’s carbonation adds lightness to batters for fish, onion rings, and other foods, and the beer’s residual sugar lends caramelized color and flavor.
Meat and vegetable stocks are the principal building blocks of many great cuisines, and beer can replace water or wine when making stock. Use paler beers such as pale wheat beers and golden ales to produce stocks for seafood and chicken dishes and darker beers such as Belgian dubbels and German dunkels to produce stocks for meat dishes.
Brochure with dinner recipes using Ballantine’s Beer, c. 1933. Ballantine’s Brewery, founded in 1840 in Newark, New Jersey, was at one point the fourth largest brewery in the United States. pike microbrewery museum, seattle, wa
Beer can particularly shine in this regard, and carbonnade flamande, a beer-based beef and onion stew, is widely considered the national dish of Belgium. Long, slow simmering breaks down hop bitterness, leaving the beer’s malt and fruit flavors intact. Waterzooi, made with either seafood or chicken, is another Belgian dish that can be based on beer.
Imperial stouts can be used to make stout-flavored ice cream or combined with ice cream to make delicious floats. Stouts can also be used in a wide assortment of cakes. Barley wines can add excellent flavor to whipped cream. Acidic beers, particularly gueuzes, make bracing and complex sorbets.
Not surprisingly, beer-based dishes are common on the menus of brewpubs around the world. Chefs at high-end restaurants, long used to cooking with wine, are now also looking to beer to bring new flavors and textures to the dinner table.
