APRIL 1998

VOL.3 NO.4

Cooking With Beer -- Excerpts from Stephen Beaumont's Brewpub Cookbook, available this month at bookstores across the United States, from Siris Books.

As a cooking liquid, beer is second only to water in its versatility. You may argue that milk has its strengths in that department, and it does, but would you use milk in a chili? Probably not. Wine certainly has its usefulness in the kitchen, but could you imagine blending wine with chocolate ice cream to make a dessert shake? The mere idea is enough to make a person cringe! And while cream has a role to play, its very nature, its creaminess, by definition disqualifies it from many diverse applications. No, for general cooking utility, it is very hard to compare anything with beer.

What gives beer its edge over other beverages in the ingredient department is exactly the opposite of what gives water its advantage. Where water is adept as a cooking liquid or component part of almost any dish because of its blandness and lack of definable character, beer's benefits as an ingredient stem from the remarkably wide and varied range of flavours and aromas available within its many, many styles and their even greater number of interpretations. Whatever the needs of the dish, chances are that beer has the flavours to fit the bill.

As a general rule when cooking with beer, it is always a good idea to use a beer style that emulates the basic character of the dish. Hence, when looking for a beer to use in a heavy and hearty stew recipe, a robust ale such as an oatmeal stout or rich brown ale makes for a wise addition. Conversely, when seeking a beer to go into a fruit flan, a fruit-flavoured wheat beer or particularly fruity Belgian dubbel ale will fulfil the need most admirably. And so it goes; acidic gueuze in a vinaigrette, light weizen for white fish, brown ale for gravies, and so on.

As with any guideline, of course, familiarity will breed contempt and more experienced beer chefs often delight in employing beers that would not necessarily be intuitively connected to certain foods. In this fashion, we end up with salmon poached in apricot ale, cabbage cooked in pale ale and spicy chimichangas made with pilsner. However, such dishes should be considered the exceptions that prove the rule.

Two other points about cooking with beer that deserve mention concern the quantity and quality of the beer used. All too often, I have spoken with or heard of people who will cook with only bottle-sized quantities of beer or will use only beer that they would not bother to drink themselves, justifying its use on the premise that "it's no good for drinking, so I might as well cook with it." These are, in fact, the two biggest woes afflicting the would-be beer chef.

On the quantity front, although it is self-evident, it bears mentioning that beer is a liquid. As such, disproportionately large quantities of it will thin the character of whatever it is being made and dilute the taste. This need not be the case. In many instances, only a very slight amount of beer is necessary and in others, the intense flavours of the beer employed will be such that less beer is required than would be immediately apparent. As chef and author Candy Schermerhorn once observed during one of our many long distance conversations, whether a dish calls for a pint or a teaspoon of beer, the amount used does not in any way detract from the ability of the dish to qualify as beer cuisine.

Equally important as the quantity of the beer used in a dish is its quality. For even though the full flavour of a beer, or lack thereof, might not be apparent in what eventually makes it to the bowl or the plate, its merits or defects will still be evident for all to taste. Plainly stated, if you use lesser beer in your cooking, a lesser dish will result. There are no exceptions to this rule and it is only when you are willing to settle for an at least somewhat second rate end product that you should cook with inferior beer. Chefs who cook with wine have an axiom they use for selecting their ingredients and it applies equally to the use of beer in the kitchen: Never cook with a beer you would not yourself drink.

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