Another Boring Beer Recipe

This article puts "Cooking with beer" at  #3 on the "5 MOST BORING TOPICS IN BEER JOURNALISM" list. I was just typing up my experiments with beer-battered fish when that article arrived — courtesy of a tweet by AGoodBeerBlog's Alan McLeod. (Oh I'm on twitter, finally, just in time for it to become obsolete probably: dansmallbeer)

The list is tongue-in-cheek, more of a platform for Hedonist Beer Jibe's cheeky ranting skills. But it's true. Beer journalism is awash with some dull, routinized writing. It gets worse when your magazine has a "Cooking with Beer" column, which you then simply have to fill every week, with increasing desperation. Here's some examples* I didn't see recently:

Milk Stout Beerios!
Ingredients
1x small bowl of Cheerios breakfast cereal
1x 12oz serving of Three Floyd's "Moloko Plus" Milk Stout
Directions
Wake up, shake the foggy regret from your throbbing head, and dump a bottle of milk stout over your favourite cereal. Return to bed and spoon into mouth gratefully — avoiding the cereal, of course. Sleep, then repeat.

Dubbel Whopper
Ingredients
3x hamburger patties
2x buns
cheese
1x snifter of North Coast Brother Thelonius Dubbel
Directions
Gourmet burgers don't come much classier than this. Soak one split bun overnight in the snifter of dubbel. Cook and assemble burger, inserting dubbel-soaked bun halves between the three patties. Eat, within dashing distance of a latrine. Avoid clothing with sleeves.

Eggs Beernedict
Ingredients
2x eggs
2x English muffins
6oz cream
1x 600ml bottle of Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale
Directions
True hollandaise sauce can be a real bingo-wings enhancer. This recipe keeps your netherlands in check with a healthy, slimming Dutch ale. Poach 2 eggs in half the ale. Whisk remaining ale with the cream. Slop the lot over your muffins and serve.

If you're still hungry, here's some pictures of my recent beer-battered fish and chips. I went with a white ale, as my wife sensibly suggested the citrus notes would work with the fish. The batter is just a cup or so of self raising flour (flour plus baking soda plus pinch of salt), with garlic powder, pepper and cayenne added. I dredge the cod through some cornstarch before battering, then sling into 2" of oil for 2-3mins a side. You don't need to deep fry, a few inches is enough.
I've been honing the recipe, and have used lager, stout, wheat beer and hoppy pale ales. To be frank, I can't say there's a lot of difference. Beer is better than water, but the type of beer adds little to the flavour in my experience. I got pretty great results with a tall-boy of Löwenbrau. I think the fizz is the important thing, as it does tend to produce very crispy batter, as you can see above. It is advisable to let your fish rest briefly on paper towels (or newspaper if you're old-school), in the open air. This provides maximum crunch and minimum lard. Oh, and a tall-boy is essential, as you'll only need half of it for the batter, and frying is thirsty work.

*These recipes are all wastes of good beer invented by smallbeer as a joke, and as such, should definitely be cooked by no-one. Except the fish. That one's yum.