Photo: Romulo Yanes
We all know that beer tastes great with food, but how about in food? As it turns out, ales and lagers are great in a wide variety of preparations, from braising and baking to roasting and stewing.
What’s your favorite thing to cook with beer?
I used to be solidly in the roasted vegetable camp. I’d crank up the oven and blast my veggies to candy-like sweetness. But there’s a lot to be said for braising vegetables, too. If author Molly Stevens doesn’t convince you in her Eight Essential Braising Tips in this week’s Gourmet Live, here are five more reasons to braise vegetables.
• Economy: Roasted vegetables shrink substantially, so you’ll need to start out with more, at least 11/2 times as much. You’re concentrating the flavor, but you’re also losing water your body needs.
• Speed: The dry heat of an oven takes longer to tenderize than the moist heat of a braise. Compare 30 to 40 minutes for cauliflower florets in a hot oven versus 5 to 10 minutes on top of the stove!
• Energy Efficiency: Add up the time it takes to preheat the oven to the upper reaches of hot and then roast those veggies, and you’ve used a lot of energy. With braising, you’ll spend significantly less time over a single burner on the stovetop.
• Great Flavor: Steaming and boiling—your other top-of-the-stove choices—are boring. They can’t give you the flavor you get from a braise. The fact that you can brown your veggies and cook them in moist heat gives you the taste you crave without the shrinkage.
• Sublime Texture: Vegetables with dense fiber, such as carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas, need the moist heat of a braise to get to meltingly tender. Just watch out that they don’t turn to mush.
