cooking with beer

I was inspired yesterday to attempt some beer cookery. I've been meaning to do this but my girlfriend has been resistant to the idea, not being a fan of beer, and I've generally been loathe to buy a six pack since I would then have several bottles mouldering in my fridge. Fortunately I found a beer store with a wide selection of singles, and Erin was out of town for the weekend, so I decided to see what I could come up with for a planned evening of video games with a friend.

I've wanted to try beer in a crock pot for a while, and I opted to go the ubersimple route - two chicken breasts cubed, in the pot with the beer, on high for two hours, after which I added teriyaki sauce and let it sit until the chicken fell apart. I used a Yuengling lager for this, and was quite pleased with the result. (Though next time I'm going to use a little less teriyaki.) I considered adding some flour to the end result to turn the liquid into more of a sauce, perhaps to put in something taco-esque, but I wound up just serving it over rice and broccoli, which worked out quite well.

To keep up the theme, I pulled out the old beer bread recipe, using a bottle of Lagunitas' Brown Shugga'. I was hoping that the overall effect would be both sweet and dark, but I was kind of disappointed. The overall effect was just a little odd, and a little too sweet - I had forgotten that the recipe called for sugar. I think I would have been better served switching the bottles, because I know from experience the Yuengling makes a good bread. Next time, I guess.

As a side note, I'm a taster. I check the flavor of my food every single step of the way. It is incredibly odd to not do so until the food is towards the final stages (i.e. cooked until non-alcoholic). It was disconcerting enough that I think I'm fairly unlikely to make a habit of this, although I do intend to keep it in mind for special occasions.

Three Things

1) While defrosting some chicken this weekend, a bag that I thought I could trust turned out to have a leak, and while I was cheerfully watching Dr. Who, water was seeping in to the bag, resulting in some rather soggy chicken. I've had this happen in the past, and the result this has on the end product's texture is usually pretty gross, but since I was grilling it, I figured I might as well see what happened. I drained the bag, switched to another, finished defrosting, splashed in some teriyaki sauce, left it alone for 20 minutes, and then threw it on the grill. The end result was pretty good - a lot juicier than one would normally expect from chicken so thoroughly grilled, but quite tasty. I don't know if I would care to repeat the experiment, though.

2) Speaking of teriyaki: apples. Seriously. We made marinated kabobs a few weeks ago, which included apples basically on a whim, and the result was fantastic. Then I took what we didn't wind up grilling and threw it in a wok for a while, and that was also fantastic. I wonder if this would work for roasting?

3) I also had occasion to grill a zucchini that was fresh out of the garden (by which I mean we cut it off the plant, washed it, and threw it on the grill). I vented it, poured honey on it, and splashed some garlic on top of that, then wrapped the whole thing in foil. It was good, but I didn't count on just how thick the skin was going to be on this particular plant. Next time I'm going to slice it in half lengthwise, and put the seasoning inside, which will (a) saturate better, I hope, and (b) make it cook faster, which is not something I ever thought would be useful with zucchini, considering.