Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's Top 5 Ways To Cook With Beer

After talking with a chef for a brewery last week, I got a bunch of questions from listeners excited to cook with beer at home. What are my favorite recipes? Glad you asked! Here are my top five beer recipes on tap here (insert groan). On tap. I love puns, it's a weakness. I'll work on it. But here they are nonetheless! The top 5 ways to cook with beer!

(credit: Food Network)

Beer Cheese Soup
Recipe

Of course in Minnesota, the standard-bearer is the beer cheese soup from Muffaletta, which they guard the way Coca-Cola guards their own recipe. You can watch a video and get some clues here. Summit EPA, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper seem to be part of the secret recipe. Friend of the show Amy Thielen, from the Food Network show "Heartland Table", has a beautiful recipe which she reveals in full!

(credit: bewitchingkitchen.com)

Beer Bread
Recipe

I love sourdough bread. I am not currently keeping a sourdough starter. My work around is to use beer in place of water in some no-knead dough. That's the kind where you make a really wet dough and cook it in a Dutch oven. Very easy to do and makes the house smell heavenly!

Coq a la Biere
Recipe

Everyone's heard of Coq au Vin, right? The French one-pot dish of chicken cooked in wine? Even better for my money is Coq a la Biere, a crock-pot or Dutch oven dish of chicken cooked in beer. Think of it as a German version of the dish. I love Saveur's recipe which is linked above.

(credit: Andrew Berndt/Getty Images)

Beer Can Chicken
Recipe

Perch a chicken atop a can of your favorite beer, and throw it on the grill. The steamy heat from the beer inside keeps the chicken moist while the skin crisps up nicely on the outside. Sometimes I shove some rosemary from the garden into the beer can—do this before it freezes!

(credit: Barbara Rie/Saveur.com)

Beef Carbonnade
Recipe

Also known as pot roast with beer. I've been making pot roast all my life. I'm a card-carrying wine critic, and I think I've decided I like the Belgian version better where you throw some beer into the pot to replace the cooking liquid. There's a link above to a full-fledged recipe. I don't bother with beef stock though, and I don't cut up the chuck-arm roast, which is my favorite cut for pot roast. I'm lazy but I get good results! You will too.