Cooking with beer

You may have seen my earlier post where I mentioned judging for the "Beers Of the World" competition. The tastings had a side-effect: quite a lot of beer I couldn't/didn't want to drink. Like a couple of the pale lagers. I'll be honest with you. The nice ones I drank every last drop of.

What to do with all the leftovers. I hate throwing anything away, but in particular beer. It seems like a sin. I fed some of it to Dolores. But there were a couple she wouldn't drink, either. I did contemplate slipping some into the kids' cornflakes. They'd probably have noticed and complained.

Eventually (I'm not very bright) I thought of a solution. Cook with it. So here, in a series that will probably only have a single installment, it's time for Cooking With Ron.

Pork stew with leftover beer
500 gm pork, cut into cubes
3 large carrots
2 large onions
3 cloves of garlic
3 half bottles (approx 600 ml) of leftover beer
5 bottles St. Bernardus Abt
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground coriander
0.5 tsp ground cumin

Brown the pork in oil in a frying pan. When done put into a large saucepan. Roughly chop the onions and garlic and brown in the frying pan. Add these to the saucepan, too. Open a St. Bernardus Abt and pour into a Chimay glass. Put the bottle, with the dregs, to one side. Take a big slurp of the Abt. Briefly fry the spices in the frying pan, making sure they don't start to burn, and add to the saucepan. Clean the frying pan because you don't want to be a filthy git, do you? Take another couple of mouthfuls of Abt.

Put the saucepan onto the heat and add the first bottle of leftover beer. Drink another mouthful of Abt, making sure to leave at least 2 cm in the bottom of the glass. Add the Abt to the saucepan and stir in well. Open another bottle of Abt and pour into a Chimay glass. Add the dregs to the saucepan and the dregs from the bottle you earlier put to one side. Add the rest of the leftover beer. When the mixture comes to the boil, give it a good stir, turn down the heat and cover. Drink all but the last 2 cm of the Abt and add the remainder to the saucepan. Leave to simmer for 30 - 45 minutes, while drinking Abt and occasionally stirring. Serve with bread or potatoes.