You’re going to eat some bad food at college. And while it’s pretty certain that the dining halls will single-handedly justify that statement for you, you’ll probably end up eating bad food elsewhere too. In fact, at some point during college, you’ll probably be the one making it. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
When students start cooking on their own, they face some obvious limitations. One, they’re inexperienced: they aren’t great with knives, they burn or overcook food, they don’t know what to buy, they don’t know how flavors go together, I could go on. Two, they don’t have coffers of money to spend on food. Money just gets spent on other things, like books, bills or booze.
But limitations are opportunities, are they not? Yes, for sure. Using booze (e.g. beer, wine, whiskey, rum, vodka) to cook with is actually an excellent way to develop flavor and to push your dollar farther. Think about it: you probably have some beer or some wine on hand right now. Alcohol is an ingredient — you should be using it as such.
Say you’ve just cooked up some pork chops and you have a pan coated in brown stuff. The French call that brown stuff “sucs,” and it’s loaded with flavor. Don’t just wash it off — use it. While the pan is a little hot and the pork chops are out, pour enough wine to coat the bottom thinly. Take a wooden spoon and scrape up the browned bits. If you want to be difficult about it, you would say that you’re cleaning, but if you’re not planning on eating some plain pork chops, you’re on your way to making a nice sauce (and cleaning up, or at least making the cleaning process easier, at the same time).
Dumping wine into a pan with brown stuff — that’s a technique called “deglazing.” And while you’ve been scraping up the bottom, the wine’s been evaporating, less liquid is in the pan and yet its flavor remains — that’s what’s known as “reducing.” You can deglaze and reduce with any liquid, and reduction can occur as you heat up liquids in general (e.g. the juice from a can of tomatoes). Water, broth, stocks and vinegars all can be used to deglaze. Beer and wine, however, can really introduce some fantastic flavors and depth to your cooking. In the pork example above, adding some minced garlic and sautéing it in the wine until it’s fragrant and barely golden and throwing in some fresh-diced tomatoes and a handful of chopped parsley will put you and your taste buds on some good terms.
Another “technique” really lends itself well to cooking with booze. It involves pouring. And that’s it. But seriously, braising (cooking something in additional liquid for a relatively long amount of time) is just a great way to cook. Classically, braising is a technique that works well with cuts of meat that are really tough. Think of a pot roast — that’s braised.
Unlike deglazing, where the construction of sauces can be a creative and diverse affair, braising tends to follow the recipe, though that doesn’t diminish its potential. But in general, braising is quite like deglazing in that your goal is to capture the flavor of the brown stuff (usually resulting from seared meat, which is meat partially cooked on high heat to render it hard and crusty), then deglazing, adding other ingredients, putting the meat back in and covering it with liquid before cooking, usually low and slow.
Now you’ve got two techniques to cook with booze, easy. This is just an introduction, a jumping off point. It’s up to you to try it out and make mistakes. And do make mistakes (that’s how you learn and get better), but do some research first and be careful, especially with using liquor and an open flame and knives because they’re sharp. But you’re smart! You’re cooking with what you have. Have booze, get swill, eat well.
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Beer-Braised Pork Shoulder
This is a great recipe. Make it soon, feed an army of your friends and bask in their admiration. It keeps well too, so it’s good for busy weeks.
(1) 5-8lb Pork Shoulder (aka Pork Shoulder Butt, Boston Shoulder) [You can substitute with what’s known as a Pork Picnic Roast, but that’s bonier and has more cartilage]
(2) Medium onions. Yellow, white, red or whatever you have. Red looks nice and brings good flavor. Peeled and quartered.
(2-3) Carrots, washed, peeled, cut into 2” pieces
(2-3) Cloves of garlic, minced
(1) 28 oz can of tomatoes, either diced or whole. No flavorings (e.g. Italian), too much salt and kind of bad dried herbs. If whole, squeeze the tomatoes into smaller pieces.
24 oz of beer. That’s two cans or a tall boy. Use a heavy beer (i.e. non-light). Something dark and a little sweet, an amber lager, a red ale or a stout. Yuengling and Honey Brown are available most places and work quite well.
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp cumin powder
2 tsp paprika
Salt & pepper to taste
Get a nice pork shoulder (for some reason, Wegmans has them all the time, usually for very, very cheap, like $8-10). Rinse it off and pat it dry. Most of the time, there’s a huge layer of fat on the broad side of the meat. You have to get that off because the whole cut is already too fatty and keeping that big piece of fat makes it too greasy. Take a knife and carefully cut that piece of fat off. Take your time. Afterwards, set your oven to 350ºF. Now, with the fat off, mix your dry spices (brown sugar, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper) in a bowl. Coat your pork shoulder with the dry mixture, rubbing it into the meat. Put the meat in a bowl or on a plate and stick it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, get a casserole or a Dutch oven, pour some olive oil in it and turn the heat to high. Get the meat out and sear it on every side, which allows the meat to brown and get crusty. Once every side is browned, remove the meat and add the onions and celery, scraping the browned bits. Let them sweat a little and get soft, then add the garlic till fragrant. Add the can of tomatoes, and then add the beer. Place the meat back into the pot, and make sure about 80 percent of the meat is covered by the liquid. Place the pot in the heated oven for about 3-and-a-half to 4 hours until the meat pulls away from the bone easily. Done.
Simply serve this over rice. You’d do better to turn this into tacos, however. Get some corn tortillas and taco fixings and go to town.