Hearty Bean, Beef and AleSoup
Thefirst snow of the season is falling. Big, fat fluffy flakes more typicalof later in the season have been drifting prettily down for the past 18 hours,and the world looks beautiful. How I love winter and snow!
Some mayremember the series I published last winter on my favorite kind of comfortfood, the warm and hearty soups and stews we all so love this time of the year. I shall be doing more this winter and hope you will be with me for theseries. Here is the first of the winter to go with the first snowfall.
Hearty Bean, Beef and Ale Soup
© Dorine Houston 2007
1 lb. great northern beans,rinsed and picked over, soaked overnight
8 strips thick-cut bacon, cutonto 1” pieces
1 onion, finely chopped (optional)
1 quart water
6 whole blackpeppercorns
1 lb. beef short ribs, cutapart, rubbed with steak seasoning and set aside to rest at roomtemperature
3-4 bottles Yard’s pale ale(as needed)
½ lb. good quality bottledsauerkraut (such as Ba Tempte)
Handful chopped freshcilantro for garnish
1 bunch chopped scallions,white and green parts, for garnish
Place bacon in soup pot andcook until it is as little cooked as possible but has still released enough fatto cover the bottom of the pot. Sauté onion if using. Addwater and bring to a boil. Reduceto a simmer and add beans and peppercorns. Simmer 1 hour; do not allow a boil to break ever. Add a spoonful cold water if a boilthreatens.
Add beef and 2 bottles ale;simmer but do not boil for an hour. Add more ale of needed to maintain soupy texture.
When the beans have attaineda creamy-smooth tenderness, stir in sauerkraut and heat without boiling. Taste and add salt as needed. Serve garnished with the cilantro andscallions.
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Comments: 34
Is it late? Yup... Trying to earn points for gift cards for Christmas shopping!
Thanks for dropping by.
I will def have to try it some time!
Thanks for sharing the recipe
Katrina, Yard's is a small Philadelphia craft brewery. All their beers are eceptionally good. You probably can't get it on the other side of the Three Rivers and maybe not even that far, although I know you can get it at the Jersey Shore--another state but much closer than our own (and Ohio's) Three Rivers. Philadelphia has been a great beer and ale city since Penn got here! An entire neighborhood (originally a separate town) was called Brewerytown for good reason. Much of the ntion's best beer came fro, Philadelphia during the 18th and 19th centuries (during which time this was also the largest city, not surpassed by NYC until the earlyu 20th C and later by Chicago and LA). During the horrible, idiotic and misguided social experiment of Prohibition, the breweries were killed off, but the city is now enjoying a resurgence. During the middle of the 20th c., when most people actually appreciated mass produced beer, Phila was second only to Milwaukee in production and definitely superior to St Louis. The first microbreweries appeared in the 1980s, starting with Dock Street, which is no longer micro but still excellent and you may be able to get all the way in CA. When some Boston people came up with their recipe for the original Sam Adams brew, they had Dock Street do the actual brewing and bottling for the first few years until they could set themselves up in Boston. They've gone mass production now--you could even buy SA in Japan in the early 1990s!--but remain well above the swill from the older mass production factories where they care more about quantity of sales than about the beauty of good beer. We now have quit a few outstanding micro and craft breweries in Philadelphia, and Yard's just happens to be one of my favorites. See http://www.yardsbrewing.com/. A town just a bit NW of Phila at the edge of the coal region, Pottstown, has the nation's oldest continuously working brewery, Yuengling's. It found a corner to work in to survive prohibition and was ready to jump up and running at it's none-too-soon end almost 75 years ago. Production is massive enough to support sales nationwide, but not of the monkey piss quality of most nationa brands. It's more like a European brewery where quantity is not allowed to ruin qualaity. Try their ale for the soup. For drinking, I'm partial to their porter and black-and-tan. We consider Pottstown local so the beer is local.
Sounds like I need to look for Harpoon's. Where is it made?
BTW, Ukrainians do not, to my knowledge, put their salo (a kind of bacon, perhaps a little closer to pancetta and not smoked, which they enjoy raw on buterbrot and zakuski tables) into borscht, but as I said, this recipe's only nod to borscht as I know it is the beef with sauerdraut and the ale for kvass.
Blessings,
Mary Mc
Monica, bagged is better, but Ba Tempte is a brand I think of as exceptional, even though it is bottled.
He-heh, Don, if this is the fod you love, whatcha doing living in winterless Tampa where it is to hot to eat like this most of the year? Sounds like you need a good snowing!
Thank you, Connie.
I hope that you'll do the same for me - and then we can all be happy!
A 10 for you!
Sounds really good!
Sonia, you could always make a visit to my part of the country! I'm sure the soup will taste good on a lanai with a view of Mauna Kea, too.
What's a hot dog without ballpark mustard and sauerkraut???
but I'd willing to give this a try.
It sounds good and warming.