Love Beer Learning

Today we are going to be baking with beer and making the British classic the scone.  This is a super easy recipe that I did with my 9 year old Brownies over Zoom the other day.  The original recipe uses lemonade but I used my ‘special homemade lemonade’ (that’s lemon & rosemary saison to you and me) and they came out great!   This recipe is quick and simple and produces lovely light scones.  Baking with beer adds a leavening agent with the carbonation of the beer.  Obviously you don’t have a home brewed lemon & rosemary saison to hand (I assume!) but you can use any lemon beer or even a wit beer; I’ve added some suggestions in the notes.   I enjoyed making the fruit version so much I thought I would experiment with a savoury version.  If you aren’t into sweet treats, check out my cheese scones made with old ale below.  Baking with beer can be quite diverse!   Baking with Beer – Lemon and Cranberry Scones Ingredients: 300g self-raising...

Roasted beer brined chicken In our house, we eat a lot of chicken so while I’ve been experimenting with cooking with beer, I’ve enjoyed cooking chicken with beer.  My favourite and the most versatile I’ve found, is beer brining.  You can use a plethora of beers to create different flavours and super moist chicken. Why Should You Be Cooking Chicken With Beer? Beer brining not only adds flavour, it also tenderises the meat. Alpha acids and tannins in the beer help to break down the fibres in the meat, making it more tender and juicy.  My current favourite beer to use for this is Theakston’s Old Peculiar.  This is an old ale and adds rich flavours to roasted chicken breast.  I also used it on chicken I put on the bbq recently and it was delicious!  I have tried craft lager with lime for excellent tacos – Utopian or Braybrook lagers would be great for this.     Don’t just experiment with cooking chicken with beer!  I’ve also beer brined beef...

Mango salsa with lime and lager  I’ve recently been experimenting with beer in my cooking.  I’ve done lots of baking with beer, but not as much cooking with beer – it felt a bit gimmicky.  We use wine in cooking, so why not beer?  But what does beer actually do to your cooking?  Today we are going to look at the ways beer affects your cooking and why you should cook with beer!   Beer brownies with stout Beer as a leavening agent There are three reasons to use beer in your cooking – as a leavening agent, as a tenderiser or to add flavour.  Let’s start with leavening.  Beer contains yeast which can add to anything you are cooking that needs to rise.  The carbonation in beer can also make baked goods light and fluffy.  Beer bread is an obvious example of this, as well as pizza dough (check out my recipe for beer pizza dough that I shared here).  You still need to consider flavour when you add beer as a leavening agent, however.  B...