72 Recipes with Beer (2024)

FAQs

What can I use beer for in cooking? ›

Beer can create light, airy fried foods and baked goods

You've probably heard of beer-battered fish, but imagine dishes like fluffy Blue Crab Beignets and Fried Cheese Curds coated with beer batter, too.

The Basics

Beer adds a rich, earthy flavor to soups and stews that makes them taste like they've been simmering for hours. Beers with a sweet or nutty taste can add depth to desserts. And don't worry about getting drunk – virtually all of the alcohol evaporates during the cooking process.

Wheat beers are great for chicken and seafood. If you're cooking pork, beef, and lamb, you will need ales, porters, and stouts. Hearty meat goes well with belgian ales. Stews pair well with ale.

The carbonation in beer helps to break down the proteins in meat, making it more tender and easier to chew. Plus, the sugars in beer caramelize when cooked, creating a delicious crust on the outside of your meat.

Amber and brown ales tend to be less bitter than the alternatives and feature a nutty flavor. Because of this, these beers are often recommended for caramels, cookies, and pies. Light-colored beers have their place in baking, too. Lagers and Witbiers are used in lighter cakes and cookies.

I first cook the pasta in beer, then while making the roux for the sauce, I begin slowly adding in beer to make the sauce. It's a great new take on a mac and cheese, and is geared towards any beer lover.

tif. Surprising but true: Cooking with beer can actually be a healthy way to flavor food—here's why. A 12-ounce bottle of regular beer has about 150 calories and is free of fat and cholesterol. It also has very little sodium-only 1% of the recommended daily allowance.

Sorry to spoil the party, but here's the real deal: Simply heating alcohol, or any other cooking liquid, does not make it evaporate as quickly as a child's allowance in a candy store. The longer you cook, the more alcohol cooks out, but you have to cook food for about 3 hours to fully erase all traces of alcohol.

How do you make beer flat for cooking? ›

If you need flat beer for a recipe, open a fresh bottle or can and let it stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. When boiling liquid to reduce its volume and concentrate its flavor, use a wide, heavy-bottomed pan to speed the reduction process.

Fertiliser

The hops in some beers contain a lot of potassium, which is great for plant growth, and the yeast is full of nutrients that help promote healthy roots.

Beer doesn't help plants and, in fact, it can be detrimental. Beer contains: Carbohydrates (sugar), protein, carbon dioxide, water, alcohol and other trace elements. Carbohydrates: Plants can't take advantage of any added carbohydrates, but the microbes in the soil can.

The number of beers it takes to get drunk can depend on the individual's body weight, tolerance, and other factors. In general, it takes about 3-4 beers for most people to reach a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08%, which is the legal limit for driving in many countries.

Drinking one or two standard beers per day (12 ounces or 355 mL) may have positive effects for your heart, bones, blood sugars, and dementia risk. But too much drinking raises your risk of many health issues, including depression, weight gain, and liver disease.

Beer can be bitter, which can quickly overpower a dish. It's much harder to reduce a beer's flavor once you've over-poured than to add some more later on. Plus, the longer you cook beer, the stronger the flavor becomes. This is all the more reason to start light and not underestimate a beer's potency.

First, the bubbles provide lift as they escape from the batter during frying. Second, the carbonation makes the batter slightly more acidic, which limits how much gluten can form when the beer and flour mix, preventing the batter from turning tough.

Meats and baked goods that are cooked for 25 minutes without being stirred retain 45 percent of alcohol. Stews and other dishes that simmer for two and one-half hours tend to have the lowest amounts, but they retain about five percent of the alcohol.