A Splash of Beer

I hadn’t stumbled onto an idea. I’d found a subculture.

All I did was mention cooking with beer. I had come to appreciate the variety, and quality, of craft beers available to drink, so it seemed natural to start splashing some of it around in the kitchen.

As soon as I spoke, beer lovers came rushing forth with advice. My mailbox swelled up with recipes. Invitations arrived for “brewers’ dinners” at restaurants big and small. People handed me books. “Eat this, eat that,” they said. Goodness.

Oregon, of course, is beer country. There are 74 breweries in the state, and ale houses galore. In my own neighborhood, six pubs pour craft beer within one block of my front door. Four breweries are within 10 minutes by bicycle.

So when I casually mentioned ale soup, a quiet stranger at the cheese shop came alive with recommendations for her favorite fixings of amber ale, Cheddar and Gorgonzola. When I asked about baking, another woman said I absolutely must soak my cranberries in Belgian kriekbier before making muffins. A fellow down the street gave me his recipe for carrots glazed with Belgian-style ale. Beer, as it turns out, is amazingly versatile in the kitchen, even in desserts.

Which, when you think about it, is no surprise. Basic beer is made of the same wholesome ingredients as bread--grain, water and yeast--with the addition of hops for tang.

What makes today’s beer cooking exciting is the range of beer styles available. You can add flavors from sweet to vinegary, from the herbed bitterness of hops to the essence of fruit, according to the beer you choose.

Because resurgent domestic craft-brewers are not bound by a single tradition but borrow from all the great beer cultures--Germany, the UK, Eastern Europe and Belgium--the range of fresh-brewed beer commonly available in the U.S. is unsurpassed. Talk about the good old days if you must, but the days have never been this good, not even close, for American beer drinkers.

The challenge is to find the right beer for the task.

“You need to start by figuring out what you want the beer to do,” says Lucy Saunders, author of “Cooking With Beer” (Time-Life, 1996). “Recipes do not call for one cup of animal protein; they specify a cut of beef or lamb or pork. You should think the same with beer.”

She offers some basic ideas: Malt-rich beers, like porters and stouts, deliver sugary caramel notes to food. Bitter or highly hopped beers, like India pale ales, add acidity, as you might get from vinegar or citrus juice. Wheat beer provides live yeast and carbonation, which work in batters. Fruit-flavored beers, naturally enough, work well in baked goods and sauces.

To see for myself, I experimented with an old standby recipe: peel-and-eat Shrimp Boiled in Beer from “The Los Angeles Times California Cookbook” (Abrams, 1981). This has always been a quick dish I do for company. I spread newspapers down as a tablecloth. Because I work for a newspaper, guests think I must know what I’m doing.

The shrimp are cooked, shells on, in beer and spices and served in a communal bowl with a pair of dipping sauces. I toss in some artichokes as an accompaniment. Everyone discards the messy shells and leaves in a pile on the newspaper. At the end, I roll up the paper and throw it in the garbage, leaving hardly any dishes to wash. (See, I do know what I’m doing.)

For years, I used whatever beer I had on hand for the shrimp--just as Cajuns do with their time-honored Louisiana beer-boiled shrimp. The original Times recipe called for just “beer.” Lately, I’ve tried different varieties--and shrimp is perfect for carrying to the table the flavor range of beer.

In the recipe that follows, I cook one pound of shrimp using a dark winter ale. Many good craft breweries produce a special ale each season, and winter holiday beers are typically dark and malty. The other pound is boiled with microbrewed Pilsner for a lighter, crisper flavor. The finished shrimp are worlds apart in taste, reflecting the characteristics of the beers.

Artichokes are steamed in a third beer--an amber ale of medium body. This “taste of beer” party is a quick, simple and effective way to introduce your palate to the flavor possibilities of beer in the kitchen.

As with anything faddish, beer can be overdone or done poorly. The American microbrew revolution is still young, and its culinary applications remain the stuff of experimentation. I have sampled recipes from several books and sources--and I found as many disappointments as delights.

Many domestic ales are highly hopped and consequently quite bitter. This makes them wonderful to drink, and “hop heads” say the more bitter, the better. But bitterness can overcome and ruin other flavors in a recipe.

“Cooking with beer is strange,” says Gary Marx, chef at Seattle’s Pike Brewery & Pub, who has gained a reputation for his beer savvy. For a long time, he tried to use beer in salad dressings. “But I couldn’t get over the bitterness,” he says. On the other hand, his crab chowder, which uses a bottle of Pike Pale Ale, is the pub’s best seller.

Another chef with a growing regional reputation for her skill as a beer chef is Bridget Bayer, owner of Bridges Cafe & Catering in Portland. Her monthly brewer’s dinners attract “beer geeks” (as they call themselves) from all over beer geekdom. As important as choosing the right beer, she says, is deciding how long to cook it. That’s because the “big” flavors of beer can get out of hand if they’re concentrated.

In chili and baked paella, she adds beer early and liberally. These dishes have strong flavors to hold up to everything the beer offers. But with sauces and dressings, she often adds only small amounts of beer at the very end--sometimes just before serving without even cooking off the alcohol.

Some uses of beer have become standard, and we hardly think twice about them. In a recent article, executive chef Greg Atkinson of the Seattle restaurant Canlis, who writes regularly about food, described the “perfect” tempura batter as equal parts lager and flour, mixed and allowed to rest an hour.

But possibilities extend beyond the familiar. In various dishes, beer, like wine, can successfully serve as a marinade or to deglaze a pan for a sauce. Beer in stock, or as a replacement for stock, has many applications. A wealth of recipes call for steaming mussels or clams with beer. Beer with cheese is a natural. Baking with beer seems to split experts: Some say it’s excellent if done right; others call it a novelty.

This unsettled, experimental nature accounts for part of the pleasure. With beer, almost anyone can venture out where few pathfinders have gone. There are wonders to be discovered.

If cooking with beer follows the trend in beer itself, interest will soar. Trend-setters from the twentysomething generation in the Pacific Northwest lean heavily toward craft beers instead of wine, and they are only now approaching the age of having families and cooking at home.

I offer my own cautionary note to this tale, which is the result of experience: Drink a beer from the batch you intend to use before adding it to a recipe.

Not that hard, is it? The reason is that the microbrew revolution is far ahead of the beer distribution system in many places. Although not as fragile as, say, fresh fish, beer is a tender commodity. A beautifully crafted beer can be spoiled by mishandling--by a long stay in a hot warehouse, for instance.

The concluding step in cooking with beer is matching your dish with beer to drink. Hardly a week passes in the Northwest without one restaurant or another conducting a special tasting to explore the subject. There are theories about complementing tastes and about contrasting tastes, again reflecting the fact that good and wide-ranging beers are still a new idea in the U.S.

For newcomers, there is usually no harm in serving the same beer used for cooking a dish for every course except dessert. In desserts, “smaller” beers are favored for cooking while “big” and even “huge” beers go as an accompaniment.

These references to “size” are how aficionados differentiate body and alcohol content of beers. And, no, you need not mail me the punch line--the one about the corresponding size of cooks who become overly fond of beer in the kitchen.

Roast Pork with Cranberry Jezebel Sauce

Active Work Time: 30 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 2 1/2 hours

Bridget Bayer of Bridges Cafe and Catering in Portland provided this recipe.

1 cup pale ale

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 (12-ounce) bag cranberries

3 tablespoons prepared horseradish

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 (4- to 4 1/2-pound) pork loin

* Combine ale and granulated and brown sugars in saucepan and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Add cranberries and boil 10 minutes. Refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour. Stir in horseradish and mustard.

* Sear pork on all sides in dutch oven over high heat. Coat with sauce and bake at 350 degrees until 150 to 155 degrees on meat thermometer for medium, 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes.

6 servings. Each serving: 468 calories; 198 mg sodium; 154 mg cholesterol; 12 grams fat; 38 grams carbohydrates; 47 grams protein; 0.75 gram fiber.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Cooking With Beer

* Try mixing equal parts lager and flour and letting it rest for one hour. The result: an excellent tempura batter.

* Use beer to deglaze pan after braising meat.

* Use beer as a marinade.

* Use beer in stock or as a replacement for stock.

* Taste beer before using it in a recipe and consider whether its addition will be pleasing.

* Add beer early and liberally to stews and other slow-cooked dishes.

* Add beer late and sparingly to sauces and dressings.