Rich Keam shares a gorgeous Aussie recipe for cooking lamb with beer. Let’s face it, who doesn’t like a great cut of meat and a beer to match?
Rich Keam
Who doesn’t like a great cut of meat and a beer to match? We’ve all had or heard of beer battered fish and chips, but my mate Mitch at Beersine in Perth, Western Australia’s sunny capital, takes things to a different level. He makes beer cheese, hop honey, meats cured in malt. I think if he could do a beer breakfast cereal, he’d probably do that as well. His thing is that cooking with beer isn’t just a slug of beer for the pot and one for the chef. He adds malts and all kinds of things to give you a dish unlike another. He shared this recipe with me for a beautiful lamb shoulder.
Ingredients
Boned rolled lamb shoulder
3 Colour Organic Quinoa
300ml Pale Ale (In WA Mitch uses local Feral Hop Hog or a Sierra Nevada Pale as a readily available substitute)
A good handful (about 150-200g) Pale Ale Malt
1 head of garlic
Grapes
Pomegranate
Figs
Corn roasted and de husked
Mint, Basil, Parsley
Juice of 1 lemon and 2 limes
Tomato
200 ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil half for salad and half for lamb
Sunflower seeds
Organic Almonds
Binary Chilli Sauce
Method
Put the lamb shoulder in roasting pan with a lid. Rub the leg with olive oil, salt, pepper and milled pale malt. Put the garlic into the pan, pour pale ale into the bottom of the pan and cover with a lid. Into the oven at 180 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove the lid after the initial 30 minutes, baste the lamb and then reduce the heat to 140 degrees for 1.5 hours. Remove and don’t forget to allow the meat to rest properly. Reserve the cooking juices from the pan.
Cook your quinoa and add all other ingredients with the exception of the figs. Grill these slightly to bring out the natural sweetness. Toss the salad together and adjust seasoning if required.
The pale malt will have helped thicken the reserved juices and gives a savoury almost biscuity flavour and texture. The malt on the lamb should become crisp. If there is any sauce left you can reserve and freeze for use next time as a base. Over time you’ll end up with a “beery” master stock that will get better and better. Serve with any good craft beer from a pale ale up to an amber or a hopped red ale. Most importantly use the salad ingredients as a guide as long as its seasonal and local you’re in flavour country.
If you like the sound of this, check out my video on craft beer in Western Australia which includes a section with Mitch. From just a small handful in the 1980s, there are now over 40 breweries in Western Australia and over 200 across the country. Fremantle is seen by many as the home of craft brewing in Australia. My video guide shows where it began and where it is today.
Rich Keam is originally from Portsmouth, UK. He was one of thousands of entrants to Tourism Australia's Best Jobs in the World campaign. He arrived in Perth in August 2013 to take up his prize job as Taste Master of Western Australia. Eating and drinking his way around the state... Hard job right? You can follow Rich's adventures on www.tastewesternaustralia.com on Twitter @richkeam or follow Kiren on Twitter @chefdebeersine.
Photo by Jessica Shaver