food/ dinner menu that good paired with beer

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Brooklyn Beer: Welcome

Pretty vague request, what do you have available to cook on? BBQ ribs comes to mind as do many other classic BBQ foods. Beer bread showcasing one of the beers would work, chili is classic beer food (I use beer in the chili), buffalo wings etc. Need a little more information as to how fancy you want this to be etc.

Well I know when I get to gether with my Buddies, its not really a Quiche, fruit and salad night .....Anyway, when we get to gether its Meat, Beef. I would get some nice think cut steaks, top with Fried onion clusters and Garlic mashed potatoes........I would do Hot Buffalo wings for an Appetizer and Cuban Cigars on the porch with choice of Beer or Brandy.............Bona BUDtite,,,,,,,,,,,Bill

A lot depends on what sort of taste in beer these folks have. Are they stuck in the tasteless wasteland of generic American lagers like Bud, Miller and Coors? Do they appreciate handcrafted offerings from small, artisan breweries that cover a wide range of color, body and tastes?

If they think there are only two types of beer on the planet, Bud and Bud Light, then the task is easy - a few buckets of fried chicken from the local take out, cheeseburgers on the grill, that sort of stuff. I shouldn't be too snotty here, though, as on occasion I really do enjoy a bratwurst topped with grilled onions and kraut, washed down with some basic American brew.

Beef chuck slowly braised with onions, chopped tomatoes and a good, rich porter or stout is a nice combination. Or a lemony chicken fricassee with a tasty hefe, lamb stew with Guiness, ...

mjb the thirsty.

The brats need to be seared then put in a pan with beer, onion, and kraut.

Beer and wings, beer and burgers, beer and ... There is lots of foods that go well with beer. The easiest thing is to do is think of the pub food, as they usually make food that goes well with beer.

Oddly enough, I tend to do it the other way around. Simmer the raw brats in the beer, kraut and onion mix for a while over low heat. I sweat the onions first and add a touch of lightly cracked mustard, coriander and caraway seeds. When the brats are mostly cooked, yank them out and brown in a skillet with a bit of butter or grill them over the coals. Meanwhile turn up the heat on the cooking liquid and reduce until you get a syrupy mass ( or mess ) that will go on a bun without dripping too much. Or forget the bun and just pile it all on a plate.

Brown first or last, either way you are going to get something that will make you want to nuke every Wienerscnhitzel franchise in the state.

mjb.

I'd go with a chinese banquet. Pretty much all of the food can be prepared ahead (apart from wok work) and it would pair well with Chinese wine (obviously) and a lager type beer. Have it all set out, your spices, garlic, ginger, meats marinating in sauces, rice in steamer, vegetables chopped/diced/sliced, noodles pre-soaked and drained for adding to wok either for frying or adding to the finished sauced dish for re-heating.

Just a last minute rush to prepare and serve a banquet, huge spread around the table eaten shared, family style. People can choose what they want, plenty of steamed rice, keep a couple of extra dishes to refresh the banquet as it goes along. Lots of soy and sweet chilli sauce dipping bowls on the table/s already. They'll fill up, share and compare their favourites, and it needn't cost you a fortune for proteins either as most of it will consist of vegetables and starches.

For afters all that is usually expected is a platter of sliced fresh fruits, e.g. oranges, watermelon, other melons, just something to freshen the palate.

Hope it goes great no matter what you end up with :)

A big bowl of refreshing chicken broth type soup with eggs is handy too...just have to keep a pot of chicken stock simmering on the stove (it will be used in a lot of the other dishes for saucing), then some lightly beaten eggs stirred in at last minute for the soup stirred thru in last minute before serving, lots of sliced green onion tops.

Could also utilise your oven for ready made spring rolls, samosas etc to bulk out the meal, or to use as starters while they get their first drinks in. Keeps 'em busy while you go spend 10 minutes whipping up your banquet.

Cheers
Daina

Why don;t you look at the cuisines that have been born in the culture of beer. I'm thinking, belgian beer, and belgian carbonnade - a stew made with lots of slowly sauteed onions, very well-browned beef, some thyme, bay, and covered in a mixture of beef stock and dark belgian beer. Yummy. Serve with mashed potatoes, maybe, or boiled, or some kind of noodle or rice.

Or try a meat pie - isn;t there a recipe for guiness pie around? i never made it but it sounds good. Belgian recipes, german, english, irish, there are lots of countries that drink beer and have a cuisine that goes well with it. I also know that italians usually have beer with pizza - except italian beer like peroni et al (and with the exception of some of the new microbrewery beers here), is pretty boring.

p.s. I would take a good beer over any wine any day. I can enjoy some wines sometimes, but none as much as i enjoy a good beer. (And siduri was the mythological beer-brewer, innkeeper who tells Gilgamesh to stop looking for eternal life and to enjoy his wife, his child, music, dance, food and life).

Maybe a dinner of sausage? Bratwurst, leberkase, knockwurst, weisswurst, etc.

I say go Louisiana. Seafood gumbo (or substitute crawfish or shrimp etouffee, chicken etouffee, chicken and andouille gumbo, etc.), rice, bushel of salad, crusty bread, sweet potato pecan pie with ice cream, additional things as desired to spiff up the occasion. The nice thing is that classic Cajun and New Orleans / Creole foods go fabulously with beer, but they can range from down-home drinking-with-the-guys food to super-upscale impress-your-boss kind of stuff.

Another good thing is that most of this stuff actually tastes better the day after it's made, because stewing is such a big part of it, and that means a great deal less work and agony for you. Just be careful about hot spices when doing this: some get stronger on the second day, some weaker.

That's the direction my mind goes in, looking at food from places like Belgium, Ireland, England, etc. I'm not sure what's readily available near you but I would cook up a pot of mussels in a blonde beer (Leffe or Hoegaarden are usually available in supermarkets near me) with some shallots, bacon and parsley.

Or as siduri says, a steak and ale pie always goes down a treat, use a stout like Guinness for the best flavour. I sometimes like to cook roast beef in a pint of stout which leaves behind the beginnings of a great gravy. And beer-battered fish can be tasty and easy to do.

It really depends on how formal you want the evening to be. A light beer goes very well with most fish and seafood, perhaps a seafood casserole could be an easy option to cater for that many people whilst still providing them with something a little bit special.

how hot is it in oyur neck of the woods?

around now i would start serving salty snack food with various textures of crunchy, wet/crisp, chewy, crispy, oily, fatty or fibrous.

protein and fats are u r friends and i guess i would stay away from too much starch?


i like beers with pickled meats such as a souse of pork shoulder, braised ham hocks or pig tails (cut up) that seasons the meat with a solution of lime juice, hot peppers, parsley and cillantro and chives with a little garlic and possibly some bitter orange juice instead of lime juice or along with it.

first u cook your meats till done to the right consistency. u boil with bayleaf and a lot of onions in the water


then chop and cool

blend up lime or seville oragne juice with salt and hot pepper and garlic to taste along with good ammounts of chive, parsley and cillantro

pour this over the meat. add a little water so it can not be too sour and adjuts tasdte with water salt, lime juce and seasoning

also chop up cucumbers into firly thin slices and arrange this around or on top of the pickle with tomato slices


this is a good starter with drinks

salty, refreshing and good meat to go with the drinks, shoulder, hocks, tails (or even feet)...tender fatty, and with the jelly stuff in the tails and skin


in austria we drink beer with stuff like this, meets and cheese and pork. altohugh we wouldnt makle a west indian pickle, we would make a spread of smoked pork fat to eat on bread along with farmers bakon and sausages and cheese and maybe some italian style anti pastos or a cheese spread

i recommend austrian liptaur cheese paste, i have to get u a recipe for this.

i remember from austiran cooking that we suually drink the beer first and continue with beer or wine with appetizers but usally drink wine with the main meal, so as far as beer i can only really recommend latin and west indian food, which, by the way, goes AWESOME with beer!

since im obsessed with trinidad, i will say that they have scrumptious cheese straws (baked savory pasteries with parmesan and chwedder baked into it) like twisted up breadsticks

they also have a fantastic cheese paste to eat with bread and drinks


another good drink food is marinated green mango. u marinate in oilive oil, salt, garlic, hot pepper and lime juice to taste and serve on toothpicks with drinks. a good

i agree with the meat pie

i lvoe the pasties of the midwest and the jamaican spicy meat patties and the empanadas of the latin countires. great with beer.

u can also make pies with yams and potato as the crust, u layer the starch with meat and or cheese in a casserole and bake...

i bet u could make a cool milkshake with a stout for desert.

by the way ever had a berliner weiss?

its a white beer that u sweeten with syrup usually a fruiity syrup form local fruits in countryside around berlin. but roses lime syrup or grenadine would be fine

yes

this would be an excuse to try ur hand at "three courses of peking duck?" (skin eaten with pancakes and sauce, then broth eaten i believe, and u could put the eggs in... and finally meat eaten with something, gee i cant remember, but it looks like a good presentation)

good desert recommendations too. fruit goes well with beers.

or a chinese roast suckling pig?

woooooooooo

or chicken poached in wine!

(i think served cold, this would be nice with beer!)

some seafood dim sum would be swell as well



here check this out!

Going wow for pow


Earlier this month, my Chinese friends ushered in the Year of the Rat. It’s supposed to be a time of hard work, activity, and renewal.
In terms of hard work and activity, it makes this year no different from any, but I’m eager to see where the renewal will come, as change is the only certainty in life.
The Chinese community in the Caribbean is small, but their achievements are quite significant and certainly, the region’s culture would be poorer without them.
In food terms, Chinese food in the Caribbean - particularly in Trinidad and Cuba - has become ‘creolised’ and I can safely say that chow har lok in Port of Spain tastes totally different (or better) from chow har lok in London, even though the same basic ingredients are used.
My most vivid early memories of Chinese food are of the goodies that came from Edwin Allum’s lunchkit in primary school. His family ran the Honeycomb Restaurant in Port of Spain and their Chinese fried chicken was amazing.
A Chinese delicacy that’s widely loved in Trinidad is pow, steamed stuffed buns known more commonly in China as bau. I love the delicate slightly sweet buns that when bitten into, reveal a delicious filling of fragrant and succulent pork or chicken.
As a belated Chinese New Year celebration, I made some pows with the help of the ever useful Bonnie who was very enthusiastic about giving this dish a shot. I used a recipe from Ramin Ganeshram’s Sweet Hands, and that recipe comes from the folks at Shay Shay Tien, one of the more popular Chinese restaurants in Port of Spain.
Although making pow is a bit time consuming, it’s not difficult and definitely worth the effort. I’d strongly recommend having a go.
Please note this recipe uses American measurements.
Shay Shay Tien’s Pow
Filling
2 tsp salt
1 star anise pod
¾ pound boneless pork butt or shoulder
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1½ tsp dark brown sugar
½ tsp ground anise
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp black bean sauce
1 tsp red food colouring
Dough
2½ tsp yeast
½ cup plus 3 tbsp, plus ½ tsp sugar
½ cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1 ¼ tsp baking powder
1 egg white
1 tbsp shortening melted with 1 tbsp hot water
20 (5 inch) squares of parchment paper
Method
To make the filling
1. Bring 3 cups of water, the salt and star anise to a boil in a large pot. Add the pork and simmer for 25 minutes.
2. Remove the pork, cool and cut into ¼ inch cubes. Discard the star anise.
3. Heat the canola in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onion and the garlic, and fry until dark brown. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and discard. Reduce the heat to medium. 4. Add the brown sugar to the oil and stirring constantly, let it caramelise for 1-2 minutes. Add the pork and stir well.
5. Brown the pork on all sides, add ground anise, hoisin sauce and black bean sauce. Stir very well and cook until nearly dry.
6. Add the red food colouring and mix well so that all the pieces of pork are evenly coloured. Cook until totally dry. Remove the heat and cool completely. The meat may be made up one day ahead and stored in the refrigerator.
To make the dough
1. Place the yeast and ½ tsp of the sugar in a deep bowl and add the warm water. Set aside until foamy.
2. Combine the flour, the baking powder and remaining sugar in a bowl. Add the yeast mixture, egg white and melted shortening mixture. Mix at high speed for 4 minutes, then at the lowest setting for 6 minutes. The dough should be smooth and highly elastic.
3. Test the dough by pressing it with your finger – it should spring back without leaving a mark.
4. Flour a clean work surface. Cut the dough into equal pieces. Roll the pieces of dough into long ropes about 3 inches in diameter.
5. Cut each rope in five pieces. Knead each piece for 30 seconds and form into a ball. Set the dough balls aside on a floured surface.
To make the pow
1. Flatten one ball of dough into a 3 inch disc. Place a heaping tablespoon of the pork mixture in the middle of the disc.
2. Gently pull the edges of the disc around the filling and pinch together to form a sac. Gently twist the edges together and push down into the dough ball. The pow should be smooth, round balls.
3. Place the filled pow, seam side down on a square of waxed paper in a bamboo steamer insert. Repeat until all the pow are filled. Do not crowd the steamer tray; allow 2 inches of space around each pow.
4. If you don’t have a bamboo steamer with more than one tray, leave the pow to rise on waxed paper on a flat surface. Allow to rise until the diameter has doubled. If your kitchen is warm, this will occur by the time all the pow are separated and stuffed. If not, cover the steamers with damp towels and set aside in a warm place.
5. Set the steamer in a wide pot with enough water to rise one quarter of the way up the bottom tray. Be careful the water doesn’t seep into the tray and touch the pow.
6. Bring the water to a simmer and steam the pow for 15 minutes. Serve warm.
Pow can be reheated in the microwave for 45 on high or in a 350F oven for 20 mins

Hope Im not too late to chime in on this topic as I love pairing food with beer. The big question is how adventurous you and your diners are. All the suggestions above are quite good, but I also encourage you to look even deeper. Beer is a great complement to foods, I dare say even more so than wine, but here are a few suggestions that you might want to consider if you want the "wow" factor.

Oysters go quite well with Porters and Stouts. It's a pretty classic pairing though not many people in the US know that. Raw oysters on the half shell do well with a nice stout. I might even kick it up by serving them with a mignonette made from malt vinegar, shallots and cracked black pepper.

For a salad maybe consider a mix of greens tossed with roasted beets and dressed in a light creamy horseradish dressing. With that serve a medium bodied amber ale such as a nut brown ale or maybe even a Pale Ale.

For dessert try serving a fruit flavored Lambic (a specialty of Belgium). Serve a raspberry or cherry lambic with a decadent chocolate dessert such as a flourless chocolate cake or even use the cherry lambic to make a beer batter to dip apple rings into then fry and serve sprinkled with powdered sugar seasoned with just the slightest hint of cinnamon.

For your entree, the skys the limit but here are a few rough guidelines to help you out (remember these are only guidelines, not hard rules and for every guideline I can think of numerous alternatives). For chicken and fish think lighter beers such as American lagers, Pale Ales or any of the numerous styles of wheat beer (these do really well if citrus is a major flavor component in your dish). For beef think heartier such as stronger amber ales, stout and porter. Lamb tends to do really well accompanied by maltier brews, again stout being very good but also Scotch Ales. Pork can go just about any way, depending on how it is served. If making a spicy dish stay with the lighter beers while stews and braises will do much better with heartier, more malty brews. As someone stated earlier, think of the roots of the dish you want to serve and look to that area for your beer choice. But most importantly relax, and have fun with it.