Jer's Black Mild
As the weather cools down a little bit (a very little bit in southern California), it’s nice to make up a pot of hearty soup to have after a long day of work. A good beef and barley soup is the perfect soup for this. And since beer is also made from barley, why not add some beer? Particularly since we’ve already established that cooking with some type of alcoholic beverage (in hand or in the pan!) almost always makes food taste better.
The beauty of making soup, is that you don’t have to be very precise, and it’s a good way to do something with all the different produce that you have in the fridge. My most recent beef soup went something like this (I’m guesstimating the amounts used since I’m not always very specific when I’m cooking):
- 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
- 2 stalks of celery, diced
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 tomatoes, chopped
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 cup sliced crimini mushrooms
- 1 cup of pearl barley, rinsed
- 1.5 lb stew beef, cubed
- 2-3 tbsp AP flour
- 3 tbsp tomato paste
- 1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
- 1-1.5 quarts of low sodium beef stock (I actually dilute it with some water to decrease the sodium)
- 1 pint of Jer’s black mild beer
- 2 tsp thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- seasoning to taste (I used salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and chili powder)
Just brown the meat in a large pot, then saute the garlic, onion, celery, and carrots in the same pot. Add the flour to the pan to cook out some of the raw flavor before adding the remaining ingredients and putting the meat back in. Let it simmer for about an hour. Serve with some cornbread or a grilled cheese sandwich and a pint of beer. I generally try to cook with a beer worth drinking, and pair the dish with that beer. It seems to be much easier to do this with beer than wines, particularly since very good beers tend to be more affordable than fine wines.
Yes, I realize that I’m telling you about a beer that’s not commercially available, yet. So use a comparable beer like New Belgium’s 1554, or Kostritzer Schwarzbier. Although one of these beers is a black ale and the other is a black lager, they have similar characteristics to the black mild that I used. These are both beers that are very dark in color but with surprisingly subdued flavors. They are malt dominant but without being sweet, and are great session beers because they are low in alcohol content and easy on the palate.
