Our Beer Story

I love trying new recipes. It's risky though, especially if it calls for certain ingredients that you're not used to because then you spend the money on it and you may not even like the recipe. Then what do you do with the left overs? I hate wasting things. But I LOVE finding a yummy new recipe!

Anyway, I found this recipe the other day for Shepherd's Pie. It sounded really good and all the reviews on it confirmed that it was really good. (I've never made Shepherd's Pie before.) As I was looking at the ingredients, I noticed that it called for a 12oz bottle of beer. And I know, because I've heard it many times, that the alcohol burns off during the cooking process, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? I still don't feel comfortable with it. It may be because the smell of beer is awful and bitter! I don't want my food to taste the way it smells. Or it could be the thoughts of buying it and the possibility of the Relief Society president or bishop or just anyone in my ward seeing you buy alcohol. Or I just don't like the thoughts of having alcohol in the house. Or maybe I've heard wrong all these years and it really doesn't cook the alcohol out! Or maybe a combination of all the above. For what ever reason, when I come across a recipe that calls for beer (there's only been a couple) - I omit it and use something else instead. In this case though, all the reviews said it was so good because of the addition of the beer so I figured I HAD to try it. In hindsight, it's probably because these people have an acquired taste for beer... I, on the other hand, do not. I didn't think about that before I tried the recipe....

Anyway, Jake actually went in and bought the beer for me. FYI, at WalMart - you can't buy anything less than a 6pk. So we went to a neighborhood grocery store, Jake ran in to get it and he comes out with a 32oz bottle of beer (I only needed 12oz!). Not sure what he thought he was going to do with the extra....

So last night I'm making this new recipe - which took way longer that I expected by the way. It's time to add the beer and Jake says, "Can I just take a sip?" My response, "NO!!!" Jake chuckles and then says, "Why not?" I ignore him. I open the bottle of beer, Jake and I both smell it - UGH! I measure the 12oz from the ginormous 32oz bottle. Then, my husband who thinks he is oh so clever and mister funny man decides to grab the bottle, put his thumb over the opening, lifts it to his mouth to make me think that he drank some. Oh dear. He brings the bottle back down moves his thumb and..... beer foam goes EVERYWHERE!!!



I was furious! Not only did we have beer all over the kitchen and the computer (I was looking at the recipe from our laptop) but I didn't see Jake put his thumb over the bottle! I couldn't believe that he would actually do that. He obviously told me that he didn't actually drink any and this morning I found the whole incident much more funny.

I put everything in the biggest baking dish I had and popped it in the oven. About 15 minutes later I heard some sizzling.... I open the oven and a cloud of smoke comes out. It was over flowing!!! It looked great, by the way, except that it was dripping all over my oven which was then burning and filling our apartment with smoke. I put a cookie sheet underneath and it helped but we still had a smoky apartment for awhile while it finished cooking. Finally it was done and we ate it. It was actually pretty good but it did have a different flavor. I think next time I will omit the beer and put in beef broth instead and find a larger baking dish. But now we will probably be eating it for the next few nights.... that's the risk with trying a new recipe.... It was quite an experience.

I know this story/post is really long but I decided to look up the whole cooking with beer thing because I was wondering if some beers are better than others to cook with and I found this article that was very surprising and enlightening! If you ever cook with alcohol, you should read this, even if you just look at the chart at the bottom. I had reason to be concerned!!

And that is our beer story.

***P.S. If you do read the article, I'm not going to tell you how long my Shepherd's Pie cooked!