Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Cooking with Beer in 3 Easy and Flavorful Recipes, From Bread to Beef

Steven John
By

First, a word to the wise: When you’re cooking, stick with a lower ABV brew like, say, a Trumer Pils (which just happens to be featured in the cooking below). I recently eschewed this advice while using a horrifyingly sharp eight-inch WÜSTHOF CLASSIC Chef Knife, no less, so I was saddled with a bandage I wore for several days on my left index finger. I’ll skip the details, but as I’m recommending you cook with beer, I’d be remiss in not offering some mild warning. Because let’s be honest, you’re going to drink beer while you do it.

While beer has long been considered a critical component of cooking in that it’s fun to drink while you’re in the kitchen, you’re missing out if you’re not also using this beautiful beverage as an ingredient in your foods.

Related Videos

Here are three rather easy and flavor-filled recipes that use beer as a critical ingredient.

Once you get these down, it’s time to try beer can chicken.

Related

Sourdough Pilsner Beer Bread

sourdough pilsner beer bread
Steven John/The Manual

I checked in with chefs Perry Lesdema and Richard Rhea of the celebrated restaurant(s) The Butcher’s Daughter (there are locations in both New York City and Los Angeles) for insight into how they make a hoppy sourdough loaf, a bread made with beer that pairs perfectly with, well, more beer.

If you want to go nuts with this one, consider getting whole cone hops, boiling them for 15 minutes (to reduce bitterness), then soaking them in cold water for at least 24 hours, replacing the beer in the recipe below with the infused water you’ll create. Otherwise, just use Trumer’s Pils.

Ingredients:

  • 1 12 oz bottle of Trumer Pils
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup melted butter
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
  2. Blend all dry ingredients in a bowl, then pour in beer and mix.
  3. Transfer dough to greased 9-inch by 5-inch loaf pan.
  4. Bake for an hour, then remove from pan and rest loaf.

Beer and Cheddar Soup

cheddar cheese soup chowder
Lauri Patterson/Getty Images

Let’s pull back the curtain on this ski lodge and brewpub classic, which seems complex and perhaps even daunting. If you can handle a bit of chopping and stirring and simmering and such, you really can’t screw this soup up. Unless you use the wrong beer, that is. A pilsner or a lager is a safe bet, though a brown ale is crazy enough to work, too.

Ingredients:

  • 12 oz of your preferred beer
  • .75 lb aged cheddar (smoked, if you’d like)
  • .5 lb bacon (slab or sliced), roughly chopped
  • 2.5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
  • 1 cup cream
  • .25 cup flour
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 1 tbsp dried thyme
  • 4 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
  • 1 yellow or white onion, finely chopped

Method:

  1. Grease a large pan then cook the bacon until it’s browned.  Scoop out the meat, but leave the grease.
  2. Cook all veggies in the bacon grease for about 5 minutes, then add 6 ounces of beer.
  3. Cook five more minutes at medium heat, then add stock and bring to a low simmer
  4. Meanwhile, make a roux in another small pan by melting the butter and stirring in the flour.
  5. Once the roux is thick and beginning to brown, mix it and everything else into the first pan (e.g. the remaining beer, the cream, the cheese, the cooked bacon, all of it, baby).
  6. Simmer and stir until everything is melted, mixed, and generally amazing.

Pot Roast Beef with Irish Stout

pot roast beef
Keith Beaty/Getty Images

Meat and potatoes are great, frankly. Meat and potatoes and carrots and onions and more … and beer? Oh so much better. I made this roast with a 14-0unce can of Breckenridge Brewery Nitro Irish Stout and it was delectable. One tip: Open your can or bottle of Irish stout a good half hour or more before you’ll use it. That lets some of the nitrogen foaminess settle and lets the beer warm (assuming it was chilled in the first place) so it won’t reduce heat in the cooking process. (Also, you can use a slow cooker on high for four or five hours, or a dutch oven, or another roasting pan in the oven, as specified below.)

Ingredients:

  • 14 oz can Breckenridge Nitro Irish Stout
  • 2-3 pound chuck roast
  • .25 cup olive oil
  • 6 carrots, peeled and coined (thick coins)
  • 3 onions, chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1 large potato, chopped
  • 1 large tomato, finely chopped
  • Salt and pepper to taste, plus red pepper flakes if you like the spice

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp oil in large skillet.
  2. Sear the roast on both sides until browned, then remove from heat and season with salt and pepper(s).
  3. Spread chopped onions on the bottom of the roasting pan (or slow cooker).
  4. Put meat atop onions, then put tomato, carrots, and potato atop meat.
  5. Pour in the beer; if it doesn’t cover the foodstuffs, you can add stock until all is barely submerged (and check during the cooking to make sure there is still sufficient fluid; you can top off with a bit more beer and/or stock).
  6. Cook for at least three hours.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Colombian or Kona coffee: Which is the superior drink?
Colombian or Kona coffee: Sweet and spicy, or rich and chocolatey? Which do you prefer?
Ways to Make Coffee

If you're anything of a coffee connoisseur, you're well aware that coffee beans come from coffea plants, which is grown all around the world. Depending on your preference of flavor, boldness, and acidity, you may already have a preferred location from where your coffee originates. Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Honduras, and Vietnam all grow a delicious bean. And while all of these types and their rich, complex flavors are worth exploring, the two coffee varieties that people seem to be the most drawn to at the moment are Kona and Colombian.

While there are over 120 varieties of coffea plant, and each makes its own unique bean, coffee beans are usually broken down into four categories of flavor: Arabica, Robusta, Liberica, and Excelsa.

Read more
How to make your own cold brew coffee at home (no, it isn’t just iced coffee)
Cold brew coffee: Making this popular drink is easier than you think it is
international coffee drinks that arent dalgona cold brew ice

I grew up in a house where iced coffee was made by pouring the hours-old coffee pot leftovers over a glass of ice. Maybe a little milk was added, or, if you were feeling extra fancy, a splash of flavored creamer. Embarrassingly far into adulthood (before Keurig came along and cramped my style), that's how I made my "cold brew." For years, this was how I drank my warm-weather coffee. But oh, did I have it wrong.
In case you're unaware, cold brew, real cold brew, is made using an entirely different method than hot coffee. While hot coffee is generally made by running hot water through finely-ground coffee beans, cold brew is made more like our grandmothers made sun tea - set to steep for a while, becoming flavorful and delicious on its own with nothing added but love, water, and time.
The result is a much smoother, silkier, bolder and more flavorful cup of morning magic. When coffee is steeped this way, much of the bitterness smooths to be much gentler on the palette, allowing you to really taste the flavor of the beans in a whole new way. So how do you make cold brew at home?
There are plenty of gizmos out there, like cold brew coffee makers, jugs, and infusers, but there's no need for these. Like many needless kitchen tools, these accessories end up being shoved into the back of the pantry, never to be seen again. Our favorite method of making cold brew coffee involves nothing more than a good old-fashioned French press.

How to make cold brew coffee

Read more
This Toronto cocktail recipe is the perfect whiskey drink
Escape to Canada with the lovely Toronto cocktail
drinkers guide to aspen aspenkitchen obiwanoldfashioned3

When you think about signature cocktails, names like Tom Collins, Brandy Alexander, and Old Fashioned come to mind. Yet, for whiskey lovers especially, there's an unsung hero that's deserving of a big-time comeback. It's named Toronto, and it's a cocktail well-suited for the chilly days of midwinter.

The drink dates back to 1922 and is a riff on the beloved Old Fashioned. It's a great whiskey cocktail, for certain, but also one that can be experimented with, as the best versions tend to involve a mix of a couple of different whiskies. The key ingredient, however, is Fernet, the intense and medicinal amaro from Italy.

Read more