Wait! Don't tip that half-drunk stubby of beer away - you can use it in your cooking.
Haha, don't worry. We know there's no such thing as a half-drunk bottle of beer. But there's a good reason to open a bottle simply to use in these dishes.
Beer makes food taste extra good.
It adds rich depth to savoury flavours, imparting a yeasty, nuttiness that's borderline umami. The alcohol in beer bonds with both fat and water molecules in your food, bringing the two together and allowing one to penetrate the other. This compounds all the flavours - especially their aroma. And we all know we do plenty of 'tasting' just through how good food smells.
Don't worry about the alcoholic content of your resulting dish. All that bonding and evaporating means most of beer's alcoholic content is sucked away during the cooking. Well, that's probably not the technical term for it, but you get the idea.
Here's a cheery bunch of beery dishes to get your party started. We promise you'll soon be under beer's influence.
Now, this is a dish that loves its beer. The bubbly brew makes a brilliant marinade, penetrating flavour into every part of the lamb until it falls off the kerb... sorry, we meant bone.
Pale ale plus a mountain of spices make for some super-tender chicken wings. These would go down like a treat with a couple of pale ales on the side.
A beer batter has long been giving fried fish the lightest crunch. Try it with an Argentinian take on calamari - a seaside treat in any location.
Sichuan beer duck is surely the pinnacle of beer dishes? It brings the spice, the heat and the beer all in under 15 minutes of prep time. The reward is a dish so full of flavour you'll feel decidedly sozzled after eating it (don't worry, zero remaining alcohol means it's all in your happy head).
Everyone knows beer goes down well at a barbecue. Especially when it's cooked right into the food. Marinade your lamb ribs in beer, sugar and spices and not only will they taste amazing, but those ribs will also stay meltingly-tender even as they stand up to grilling.
That's another of beer's (full) strengths: its strong flavour stands up to slow cooking as well as grilling. A beef and beer stew is on the menu in many cultures, perfected here by the Belgians. It's worth sourcing Belgian beer for full flavour impact, but make sure you take a couple of sips before pouring it in. That's some good drinking right there!
Stay with the stew pot for a moment, because the French do it so well. Gabriel Gaté turns on the charm with a bottle of beer singing chicken and mushroom's praises. The fact that this casserole uses chicken drumsticks makes it a budget-friendly option to feed a crowd, too. That means there are more dollars left over to get the beers in...
A pie flavoured with beer and Vegemite is surely taking the piss? All puns aside, this classic Aussie beef pie is way better than the type they palm off to you at the servo. Serve it up with homemade tomato sauce and an ice-cold craft beer and you're laughing.
It seems fitting that beer would find itself in a noodle dish - the two are a match made in foodie heaven. Da pan ji is full of big flavours and beer enhances every single one of them. You'll be hooked in one bite and you won't believe you made it yourself. But you did.
We've established that beer makes an excellent marinade, but it's also exceptional at glazing, too. Especially when reduced with maple syrup, mustard and other delicious bits. Then slathered all over pork belly just before serving. Exceptionally good.
While 'beer 'n' meat' seems to be joined at the hip, that's not always the case. Beer is also good friends with vegetables, as this beer-battered broccolini shows off. Very, very good friends.
Proving that beer plays well with anyone, tofu tacos light up our vego worlds. Beer makes even bolder huge flavours like coriander, cumin and tomato, turning boring old tofu into a taste bomb. If you've got a friend who says they 'don't like tofu', make them this dish and change their mind.
There's plenty of seafood gains over here - clams or pippies cooked in beer served with a pile of fresh herbs. It's enough to make you want to dive right in.
If you're on the beers and you're getting kind of hungry, then this is what you'll make. It's an ode to the Lisbon francesinha, but with added tuna. It's a bit like a quiet little cheese toastie tore it up during a night on the town. Plus you'll have tuna in the cupboard and the same cannot necessarily be said for steak.
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