Cooking/baking with alcohol - Drunk food

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Oh, tons of my baking uses alcohol. Let's see... Off the top of my head...

From my holiday baking, my fruit cake and rum balls both use a ton of booze.

From my everyday type baking, one of my two apple pie recipes has a little in the filling, while my other apple pie (And all of my other fruit pies, for that matter) have it in the crust. I've got a number of cakes that include alcohol - a chocolate rum cake, an Irish cream cake, and a couple of amaretto cakes. And then we get into toppings - I've got an Irish cream glaze that I put on the Irish cream cake, but I also use the same glaze when I make donuts. There's a chocolate and coffee chiffon cake I learned from my mother that I doctored up to include some booze, too.

For non-baked sweets, bananas foster is pretty fucking epic, either with some nice cinnamon or vanilla ice cream, or served over Belgian waffles with whipped cream. And whipped cream itself can always be doctored up with Irish cream, amaretto, Frangelico, kirsh, applejack, or any number of other liqueurs.

For savory cooking... Well, beer, mead, or hard cider (Depending on the meat, the dish, my mood, and what I've got handy) make great meat simmering liquids. Onions caramelized in a nice low-hops, malty beer go fantastic on a burger, steak sandwich, or pretty much anything else. Beer battering for fish or shrimp or what have you, of course. I've got a great white sauce recipe that uses white wine, which goes great with shrimp, scallops, or (in a pinch) chicken. I loves me some bourbon chicken, too, and while there are recipes without it (since apparently it gets it's name from Bourbon street, not the booze), I find a couple splashes livens it up. A nice red wine peppercorn sauce goes well with a steak.

I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of things. And now I'm starved, and I'm only having leftover enchiladas tonight. Sigh.
 
My mom taught me her recipe for beef bourguignon years ago, I've still got it on lock and it makes a good sunday meal from time to time. The trick is to take your time making the broth and to use red wine (and perhaps chocolate, to taste) as its base. Using alcohol to deglaze pans is also pretty based and can make for good sauces.
 
Trooper Beer cake is pretty good, as is Banana Bread Beer banana cake

Seconding beer battered stuff. Hobgoblin beer is the best for that imo.
 
I love cooking with booze, sometimes I even use it in a recipe.
But really, here’s a great thing to try. Kipfel cookies. Our family recipe uses rum in the filling, and it’s delicious.
841939

It’s based off of this one here, but we use around four times the rum and add nuts until it tastes right. You know when it tastes right, your soul will guide you.
The amount you put in the cookies is up to taste, how fat do you want these to be?
Roll them to look like this:
841953

We also roll the kipfels, while hot, in a powdered sugar/vanilla sugar mixture, but normal sugar works fine.
You tell when they are done when they are very lightly browned on top, and you want them to not be too brown on the bottom. Move around the oven if needed.
They’re a lot of work, but it’s a good sized batch and they are well worth it.
 
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Want to try a cherry rum and cola cake. Any suggestions for the best kind of cooking rum?
 
Burro said:
Want to try a cherry rum and cola cake. Any suggestions for the best kind of cooking rum?
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When we make rum based cookies, white rum works fine. Spiced rum adds a different flavor that some may like while other don’t. It’s mostly up to taste, so experimenting might be worth it.
 
Geeze, that's a really complicated question. It kinda depends what you like. I generally use a spiced rum for baking with - usually Kraken. Some people don't like using spiced rums. Some people prefer a lighter rum.

The most important thing, though, is to find the right balance between a cheap rum and an inexpensive rum. That's one of the reasons I tend to use Kraken. It's not super-spendy, but it doesn't taste like too shit of rum. If you go with something too cheap, it will effect the taste of the finished product. I've ran into a lot of people who dismiss that, they say that you can use the cheapest of the cheap to cook with. It's not true. You don't need to go high-end, but avoid swill. If you wouldn't drink it, don't bake with it.
 
Sprig of Parsley said:
Certain wines and liquors are excellent for deglazing/making sauces

Beer-batter is amazing on deep fried foods

Rum cake is godly and good fruitcakes are soaked in liquor
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I actually wanna start keeping red and white cooking wines just so I can rinse down my pan with them. Sauces are my favorite part of the dinner-time meal! Any suggestions?
 
Suggestion: Cooking wines are vile filth. Pick up a bottle of inexpensive real wine in red and white that's still drinkable. Won't be any more expensive, given cooking wine costs an unreasonable amount for the volume you get, and you'll be a lot happier.

Barefoot wines are my go-to cooking wines, and I can drink them happily too.
 
The things weeaboos don't know about cooking with sake.....

If you're thinking about making Japanese food without sake or mirin, consider yourself for sudoku. Partially kidding, but seriously, Japanese core cuisine is all about using sake and rice wines. For soups, rice toppers and nabemono, sake helps give a deeper profile and mirin also helps with rounding out dishes with its sweetness. You want real teriyaki? Find real mirin, not that cheap aji mirin they make out of corn syrup and leftover plastic factory backwash. The best authentic ramen uses sake and mirin for base ingredients. Red snapper rice cooked with sake, mirin, and soy sauce and no water on boil is heavenly. If things like rice, miso, and soy sauce are the heart of Japanese cooking, I'd say sake and mirin are its soul. Granted, it's not for everything, like miso soup, but you cannot say you've touched real Japanese cooking without touching sake and mirin.

For non Japanese centric foods, sake I've found surprisingly goes over well in alfredo and plain pasta with cheese, and especially when you use butter. I'll probably experiment more on that but it's not that bad really.
 
I've got a few made with Bourbon that I like.

BOURBON CHOCOLATE PECAN PIE
INGREDIENTS
  • Pre-baked pie crust
  • 1 ½ cups chopped toasted pecans
  • 1 cup chocolate morsels.
  • 1 cup dark corn syrup
  • ½ cup granulated sugar.
  • ½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar.
  • ¼ of a cup bourbon
  • 4 large eggs.
  • ¼ cup butter melted.
  • 2 teaspoons white cornmeal (or almond flour)
  • 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract.
  • ½ teaspoon salt.

STEPS.
  • Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.
  • Sprinkle pecans and chocolate evenly into pie crust.
  • Stir together Corn syrup and the next three ingredients in a large sauce pan and bring ti a boil over medium heat.
  • Cook, stirring constantly, for the next 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
  • Whisk together eggs and next 4 ingredients.
  • Whisk together one fourth of hot sugar mixture into the eggs mixture.
  • Add remaining sugar mixture into the egg mixture and whisk together.
  • Pour filling into pie crusts.
  • Bake for 55 minutes, or until set.
  • Cool completely before serving.
I make this every Thanksgiving.

There's also these babies.

Bourbon Candied Pecans
INGREDIENTS
  • Pinch of Nutmeg
  • Pinch of Cloves
  • 1 Tablespoon of Bourbon.
  • ½ Lb (around 2 cups) of Pecan Halves.
  • ½ Tablespoon of Honey.
  • 1 Egg white.
  • ½ Tablespoon Vanilla Extract.
  • ½ cup White Granulated Sugar.
  • 1/8 of a cup Brown Sugar.
  • ½ Tablespoon Cinnamon.
  • ½ Teaspoon Salt.
STEPS
  • Preheat Oven to 250 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with Aluminum foil.
  • In a large bowl, combine the Sugar Brown sugar, Cloves, Nutmeg, Cinnamon and salt. Stir and set aside.
  • In another large bowl, combine the egg white, Bourbon, Honey, and Vanilla. Stir vigorously until frothy.
  • Add the Pecans, and stir to coat well.
  • With a slotted spoon, or fork, lift out pecans, and place them in the sugars/spices bowl. Do NOT add any excess liquid (there should not be any, anyway, but just in case…)
  • Stir to coat well, stir until all spices and sugars have been used up, and there is none left at the bottom.
  • Pour onto the prepared baking sheet, and spread out to a even layer.
  • Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring it every 20 minutes.
  • They will remain sticky until they cool.
  • Serve.
 
Coq au vin is a staple. French onion soup with Cognac, Guinness beef stew, wassail (I consider it food), and Goulasch with dark ale are all in the rotation. A lot of stews benefit from dark ale, including chili.
 
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