Beer can provide
a boost to some vegetarian dishes.
Vegetarian food gets a bum rap.
Even as vegetable-centric restaurants have shone a new light on cooking without meat or seafood at the center of a dish, too often vegetarian home cooking gets reduced to drab faux meats or boring veggie burgers.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Vegetarian foods can be protein-rich and tasty. They can even be interesting. And they don’t even have to be hard to cook. So what’s the secret? Beer!
After all, beer makes everything better, right?
This isn’t a revelation. Beer has long been used to bring depth to simple recipes — think beer-battered fish, beer-steamed mussels, beersimmered brats. But the common thread among those dishes is that they leave vegetarians on the sidelines. Yet many of the very elements that make beer a tasty addition to a fish or meat dish can do the same for vegetarian proteins like beans or tofu.
Let’s start with beans. I get it, beans seem dull (although they aren’t if you know how to cook them. Try cooking them with herbs and/or aromatics in the oven — the recipe is below). But using beer to glaze beans gives them a new dimension that makes them a delicious filling in a taco or burrito, or served atop corncakes for breakfast.
Beer can also act as the base for a delicious batter to coat tofu that, when fried, makes for a vegetarianfriendly take on Baja-style beer-battered fish tacos.
But before you get started, remember the adage: Don’t cook with wine you don’t want to drink. It holds true with beer too. Trust me, I’ve tried. If the beer doesn’t taste good (I’m looking at you gluten-free beer that will go unnamed), it won’t make for a good meal.