4 Tips on Pairing Beer and Food for Optimum Flavor.
by Kevin Smith AuthorThere’s
something to the classic pizza and beer dining regimen that goes beyond the
college dorm life. Certain flavors partner well together to bring out the best
tastes, and that certainly applies to how you pair your foods with your
favorite beers. That’s right! Flavor pairing isn’t just for wines. Here are a
few tips to get those tastes just right.
Pay Yourself a Complement
You
want the flavors the complement each other well. It’s the whole wine and cheese
concept—the flavors may be vastly different, but when brought together the idea
is that they enhance each other and bring out an entirely different taste bud
experience. Great compliments are achieved by, say, pairing rich foods with
also have a heavy and rich flavor, like stouts or even porters. Similarly, a
chicken salad may do better with a light beer, and fruity wheat beers tag along
well with fruity dishes or sweet desserts.
Consider the Contrasts
Sometimes,
opposites attract. Pairing contrasting beer and food flavors may seem
intimidating to start with, but it gets easier over time. Consider these strong
flavors that may dominate a dish: sweet, oily or rich. As long as the dish
you’re trying to contrast as a singular, dominant kind of flavor, then it makes
it easier to partner a contrasting beer with it successfully. It’s why, say, a
stout beer pairs well with oysters.
Don’t Reach Too Far
Every
palette is a bit different. In general, a lot of medium and dark beers have
strong, somewhat overpowering flavors. This may make them harder to pair with
foods that don’t also have a strong flavor to them. The tricky dilemma of
partnering beer and food is that you don’t want to choose a beer that swallows
up the flavor of everything that you’re eating.
Cleanse that Palate
When
the food that you’re eating has a really, really strong flavor, sometimes what
you really need from your beer is a palate cleanse more than anything. Let’s
say the spicy wings you’re trying on for size are the next notch up from what
you’re used to in the spice level. Maybe a light beer is just what the doctor
ordered to wash it down.
Dining
well at made from scratch restaurants in
Alpharetta, GA, or your favorite dives, can take on a
whole new edge whenever you start testing out different beers with your meal.
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Created on Jan 25th 2018 04:17. Viewed 444 times.