Categories
beer and food

Things to do with crap beer #5: chicken thigh casserole

chickenstew

You need a specific type of crap beer for this one — you don’t want too much bitterness. We’ve used Stella Artois, and you have to cook it for a long time before the bitterness and metallic taste disappears. We got much better results with Debowe Mocne (other sweet Polish tramps’ lagers like Warka Strong would probably work) and also a bottle of Kronenbourg Blanc that a well-meaning friend left round.  It also works quite well if you have any flat homebrew left in a polypin.

By using chicken thighs on the bone, you create the stock as the casserole cooks, producing a really rich taste. It’s great comfort food, especially on a rainy day like today.

Recipe after the jump.

Categories
beer and food

Things to do with crap beer III – chutney?

A big off jar of chutney
A big off jar of chutney

We’re going through a little chutney obsession at the moment, and naturally we’ve been investigating using beer in the process.

Googling “ale chutney” gets you lots of results, with lots of recipes telling you to use a good ale. However we couldn’t find much that used other types of beer. VelkyAl has made a chilli chutney with Primator Double 24 and also a roast onion and garlic jam using a nicy malty Chodovar.

I wonder whether you need to use good beers? Given that you usually add vinegar, not to mention sugar, onions and other strong-tasting ingredients, and that you cook it for ages and then store it for months…will the quality of the beer still come through?

We’re going to try using beer in a number of chutneys over the next few months, including good ales, ropey lambic-y homebrew and crap lager that we just can’t seem to get rid of. The principle for adding beer to chutney seems to be to replace half to most of the vinegar with the same proportion of beer.

We won’t know for a few months what has worked and what not, so if any of you have great recipes to share, do let us know!

The Chutney pictured above has good beer in, as it goes — Brugse Zot — along with plums, apple and onion. It already tastes nice after just a week.

Boak