Take Your Beef Stew To The Next Level With A Little Leftover Booze

Beef stew is a hard dish to mess up, in theory at least. There are many ways to achieve a beautiful beef stew, and it is traditionally chock-full of flavorful ingredients such as potatoes, onions, and carrots that bring the hearty dish to life. It's cozy, warming, and filling. But to take it to the next level, just pour in some beer.

Depending on which type you use, the addition of beer can bring toasty, bitter, nutty, or earthy notes to a beef stew, rounding out and amplifying the other deep, heavy, and meaty flavors already present. Some traditional Belgian beef stews such as carbonnade use either half beef broth and half beer or only beer to flavor the stew. The beer slightly brightens its flavor and adds depth and complexity, but not in a way that completely alters the dish's aura.

Beer also makes the tasting experience more dynamic by adding more layers to the overall flavor profile — the rich, savory beef and slightly sweet vegetables find a middle ground in the beer. Its malty notes cut through the depth of the other ingredients, providing an added dimension to the flavor, similar to how V8 is a juice that makes beef stew taste better. While you can use any beer you like the taste of, some work especially well.

Specific wines or spirits are often included in beef dishes – red wine and Cognac feature in the French stew boeuf Bourguignon, for example, and they're also the boozy ingredients Ina Garten adds to pot roast. The flavor of beer also beautifully complements the savory, umami-rich notes of beef stew — and the final overall taste will depend on the type you add.

For a deeper, darker beef stew, add a robust beer like a dunkel – the original Oktoberfest beer – or a toasty, malt-heavy German bock. You can also add in a stout beer, such as Guinness, which adds a delicious richness as well as giving the stew a dark and appetizing color. In general, darker, more powerful beers will both complement and cut through the strong and hearty flavors of a beef stew, imparting malty, toasty notes into the dish. Avoid anything overly bitter, though.

For a brighter, more delicate addition, add in a pale ale, or even a light lager. The flavor that comes from these beers will be more toward the hoppy, acidic side of the spectrum. They'll give the dish a lighter finish, balancing out its heavier overtones.