Cooking with Beer

“Guinness has this great molasses flavor that intensifies when you cook it down,” Melissa Clark says. “It adds richness to the fish without adding fat.”

With coffee, dark beer, smoky bacon and three kinds of chiles, this is one deep, rich, spicy pot of beef chili.

A blend of three chiles and a bottle of pale ale flavor this bold short-rib chili.

This recipe for lecsó (LEH-tcho), a traditional sausage, tomato and bell pepper stew from Hungary, is made with beer for a deep, rich flavor.

A perfect pot roast, delicious served over buttered egg noodles.

This rich soup is one of chef Jonathon Erdeljac’s favorite, especially with jalapeños and smoky bacon stirred in.

Steven Raichlen flavors this speedy chicken dish with Xingu (a Brazilian black lager that has a distinctive colalike flavor), plus mustard and onion—evoking the classic combination of beer and bratwursts. “The marinade brings a lot of flavor to a meat that really needs its,” he says.

This classic Belgian beef stew is known for its sweet-sour combination of caramelized onions and beer. Any dark Belgian-style ale would be a good choice here. As with most stews, the dish will taste even better a day or two after it’s made.

This rich, warming beef stew from Andrew Zimmern is the ultimate comfort classic.

F&W’s Grace Parisi brilliantly tweaks a classic recipe for mussels by using lager instead of white wine.

Hugue Dufour makes a pork broth for his French onion soup using bacon for smokiness and a pig’s foot for richness. Omit the pig’s foot for a lighter broth.

These light, crisp fritters include bits of chopped scallops in a batter made with clam broth and pilsner—the perfect expression of chef Jimmy Bradley’s New England tastes.

Skinless turkey thighs and drumsticks are packed with flavor; they’re also low in fat and high in protein and essential minerals like selenium. Deborah Schneider braises the meat in beer until ultratender, then shreds it for tacos. “It’s also fabulous in a sandwich,” she says.

Paul Kahan is a big fan of chicken thighs because they have so much flavor and are so inexpensive—the best of both worlds. He braises the thighs in beer to make an excellent stew that he (naturally) pairs with more beer, such as Pere Jacques from Chicago’s Goose Island Beer Company, a Belgian-style ale full of caramelized malt flavors. You can use frozen fava beans, but add them, blanched, in the final step.

Fred Donnelly makes these spectacularly sticky ribs at home. “Anyone you make them for falls in love with you,” he says.

Lots of people brine their turkeys. Not Michael Symon, who thinks brining makes the bird a little rubbery. He salts his bird well and refrigerates it overnight to season it. Before roasting, he covers the breast and legs with cheesecloth that’s been soaked in a cider-infused butter. For his beer-spiked gravy, Symon recommends the German-style Dortmunder Gold, made by Great Lakes Brewing Company, from his home state of Ohio.

This risotto was created when Jeff Smith’s daughter, Isabelle, tossed some Laughing Cow cheese into a pot of risotto. “It adds a lot of richness without making the dish taste too sharp,” Smith says. The cup of Budweiser beer is his own addition, a last-minute fix on a night he found himself without white wine in the house. “I ended up preferring it to wine in this dish,” he says.

Chef Phillip Kirschen-Clark uses beer in everything from cocktails to desserts. Kriek—lambic beer fermented with cherries—intensifies the fruit flavors in these crisps.

Chef Jeremy Nolen updates German classics at Brauhaus Schmitz in Philadelphia, including this intense mustard for sausages.

Sean Paxton cooks multicourse dinners with beer. This vinaigrette, which he makes with an India Pale Ale, shows beer’s lighter side.

“I started making my Abilene sauce 20 years ago, and every year I tweak it or add something,” says chef James Holmes of his signature barbecue sauce. Despite its spicy intensity, the pork and beer flavors come straight through.

Adding creamy white ale to this intense curry broth helps mellow the flavors.

This ice cream has a strong, malty Guinness flavor that goes supremely well with the salty, milk chocolate–covered pretzels. If you don’t want to make the chocolate-covered pretzels, they’re easy enough to buy.

For this rich tiramisu, Jason McCullar first makes a ginger-spiced cake, which he then soaks in a reduction made with chocolate stout (Rogue brewery makes a good version) before layering it with mascarpone cream.