Irish Beef Stew with beer

Cooking with Hope Beer: Beef Stew

BBQ Beer Pizza

Beer & Food Pairing: BBQ Beef Pizza

Beer and pizza. One of life’s great food pleasures.

Yes you can pick up the phone and have it delivered, or dig out that pepperoni pizza that’s been lying in the freezer for weeks, but we prefer to take the time to make our own creation. It’s not as much work as you might think, tastes great and you get that sense of achievement when you take it out of the oven.

This recipe is perfect for using left over beef from a Sunday roast, and is great with any red meat. If you are using left overs from the roast beef keep 100ml of the cooking juices, more on that later.

The sweetness of the sauce and caramelized onions means it pairs amazingly well with our PASSifyoucan Pale Ale.

Pizza Dough

It all starts with the dough and there are lots of recipes out there which pretty much have all the same ingredients and method. Check out out our Handsome Jack pizza dough recipe for a dough with a little bit of hoppy goodness!

BBQ Sauce 

We’re going with a BBQ sauce rather than the classic tomato sauce as it works so well with the toppings and is a far cry from the overly sweet BBQs sauces that comes with take-out pizzas. We got this recipe from the Saturday Pizzas book from the Ballymaloe Cookery School.

Ingredients (Makes 240 ml)

220ml tomato ketchup

100ml water (Tip: Keep the beef cooking juices and use instead of the water for extra flavour!)

1 tbsp dark brown sugar

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp mustard powder / dijon mustard

Pinch of salt & pepper

Method

Put all the ingredients into a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then remove from the heat and allow to cool. That’s it!

 

Toppings

1 bag Mozzarella

120g Sun-dried tomatoes

120g Shredded spinach

2 red onions for the caramelized onions

Shredded beef

Method

Slice the onions. Heat a pan on medium high heat, add a little butter. Add the sliced onions and stir to coat them with the melted butter. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook slowly for a minimum of 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the pizza bases are rolled out and ready use a ladle or a big spoon to pour the BBQ sauce onto the middle of the base and spread it around with the back of the ladle or spoon. You only want a thin layer of sauce!

Spread a big handful of the mozzarella evenly on top of the base. Scatter the shredded beef, shredded spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and caramelized onions on top.

Put the pizzas into a preheated oven, 150 degrees/ gas mark 2 and cook for 7 to 10 minutes. The bottom and crust should be cooked through.

Take out of the oven, let rest for a minute, slice up and enjoy!

Food and beer pairing grilled chicken recipe

Beer & Food Pairing: Grilled California Chicken

The weather has definitely been hit and miss, but it’s an Irish Summer after all! We’ve had a few occasions to fire up the BBQ and one of our long-time favourites is this gorgeous grilled chicken recipe from Delish.

It pairs great with Underdog Hopy Lager or PASSifyoucan Pale Ale…to be honest no matter which of our beers you crack open you are onto a winner!

 

Ingredients

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

2 tsp Italian seasoning

Pinch of salt

Ground black pepper

4 chicken breasts (Tip: Slice an opening in the large side of the breast to allow the marinate in)

4 slices mozzarella

4 slices avocado

4 slices tomato

If you want to get fancy:

2 tbsp freshly chopped basil, for garnish

Balsamic glaze for drizzling

 

Directions

In a small bowl, whisk together the balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, honey, oil, Italian seasoning and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the chicken breasts and marinate for at least 20 minutes.

If you are using a charcoal BBQ, go get it ready (if you are using a gas BBQ skip straight to the second part), then open a Hope and relax.

When you are ready to grill, place the chicken on the hot BBQ, eight minutes per side, until nicely charred and cooked through. We like to brush the uncooked part with a little more of the marinate before turning.

Top the chicken with the mozzarella slices, avocado, and tomato and cover grill to melt. Serve up with whatever else you’ve got on the BBQ and pour yourself another beer!