Prawn Tails With Beer

Hops, malt, and yeast are the three main ingredients of beer. Hops give the beer its dominant bitter flavor, malt provides a hint of sweetness, and yeast makes beer tastes a bit like bread. When used in cooking, beer lends all these flavors to food. In this recipe by Chef Luc Huvsentruvt, beer is made into a yummy beer sauce for seasoning sautéed prawn tails served with glazed apple slices. To make the sauce, Chef Huvsentruvt uses pale ale Belgian beer.
Of all the different kinds of beers, pale ale is the most versatile when it comes to cooking. It has a good balance of rich and bitter flavors with some fruity notes. And when it comes to pale ale, Belgian beer comes on top of the list. Described as a “beer paradise,” Belgium has hundreds of breweries and beer varieties and is famous for brewing some of the best and most flavorful beers in history.
Blanche de Bruges, a Belgian white beer known as “witbier” or “bière blanche” in French, is also an ideal beer to use in this recipe. Blanche de Bruges is a fairly crisp beer with a very light sweetness, hints of citrus fruitiness, and a refreshing finish. Its appearance is somewhat cloudy, with a creamy texture without being heavy when in the mouth. It has moderate alcohol content in the 4.5 to 5.5% ABV range. All these characteristics make it ideal for pairing with seafood, particularly prawns or langoustine.
To make a good sauce, the beer has to be properly heated and reduced to magnify its flavors. Boiled for too long, however, its essence will be lost. In this recipe, the beer is cooked with chives and tomatoes to balance and counter the beer’s bitterness with the herb’s zest and the fruit’s acidity.

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