• About Kel

Inside Kel's Kitchen

~ Love to eat, love to cook, and trying to keep it healthy!

Inside Kel's Kitchen

Tag Archives: beer

Brewers Pot Roast – Beware! Your House is Going to Smell Fabulous!!!

11 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Inside Kel's Kitchen in Cooking, Food, Meat, Recipes, Slow Cooking

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

beer, Cooking, Cream of Mushroom Soup, Food, onion, Pepsi, Pot Roast, recipe, Slow Cooking

  
Beware! This yummy pot roast will fill your house with a fabulous aroma as it slow cooks! You’ll be so ready to chow down and luckily it tastes as good as it smells! The meat will be fall apart tender and the gravy is so incredibly savory. You won’t be able to get enough of it! Another great thing, is this is super easy to make and pretty low in fat for the amount of flavor it delivers.

This pot roast recipe was originally called Pepsi Pot Roast, but I was looking to reduce the calories, so I decided to use a light beer instead of the soda. The carbonation is a great meat tenderizer. The Pepsi makes for a much sweeter gravy, but the beer didn’t disappoint. The gravy was just as delicious. We had a Bud Light lurking around, so that’s what I used.

You probably noticed the bright purple potatoes on the plate. LOL! We all decided these would be perfect for Easter dinner. I had a large, purple sweet potato, so I used that and added 3 russet potatoes to make the mash you see here. My standard mashed potato combo can be used with white potatoes, sweet potatoes or any combination. I mix in milk, fat free sour cream, fresh garlic and salt and pepper. Then I rounded out the dinner by cooking some frozen peas.

This was great hearty dinner for a winter’s night!

Brewers Pot Roast

2-3 pound beef roast

1 bottle of beer or one can of Pepsi

1 can lowfat cream of mushroom soup

1 packet of onion soup mix

Put roast in slow cooker. Pour in beer, then mushroom soup and then sprinkle with onion soup mix. Cover and cook on low for 6 -8 hours.

To make the gravy: Towards the end of cooking time, ladle out 2-3 cups of liquid from slow cooker into a sauce pan. Make a slurry of 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1 tbsp water. Stir until smooth and then pour into gravy  and stir while simmering over medium heat.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Drunken Pork Chops

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Inside Kel's Kitchen in cooking, Food, Meat, Recipes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ale, beer, brown sugar, Cooking, drunken, Food, pork chops, recipes, sauce

 I grew up eating grilled pork chops.  It didn’t matter what season it was because we had a covered porch that was the perfect home for the grill.  My Mom, well she LOVES pork chops. She would eat them every night if my Dad and I would have let her. Pork chops, pork tenderloin..you name […]

https://owlreadthat.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/drunken-pork-chops/

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Beer Butt Chicken – Yes, you heard me right!

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by Inside Kel's Kitchen in Barbecue, cooking, Food

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

barbecue, beer, Beer Butt Chicken, Chicken, Cooking, Food, Grilling, recipe, Smoking

   One of my favorite smells in the world is when a barbecue is fired up and it gets even better when you add some wood for smoking to the mix. I got to enjoy this smell last night, when we made Beer Butt Chicken. Now I know the name sounds funny, at least that’s what I thought when I first heard it, but in my humble opinion I think this is one of the best ways to cook a chicken! Because of the placement, the beer evaporates up into the chicken. This makes the meat incredibly moist and tender.

How do you make this delicious chicken? Well, it’s really simple! You start with a whole chicken. You will need to make sure the inside of your barbecue is tall enough to be able to accommodate a chicken standing on end. The chicken has to be able to stand on end for this to work. Resting on its side just won’t do for this! This bird needs to stand at attention!

Cooking this chicken can be as easy as setting your chicken, bottom side down, over an open can of beer. We’ve done it this way, but it can be challenging to get your chicken to balance and remain upright. This is why we bought one of the available racks for just this cooking technique (see photo). These racks are not very expensive, but they do help with balancing the bird and keeping it in place. These racks can be purchased at Amazon.com.  

 Before putting my chicken on the rack, I decided to cover it inside and out with some of my dry barbecue rub (see previous blog post for recipe). You also want to pull out any of the organs that are inside the bird. You don’t have to season the bird like I did, but this jazzed up the flavor quite a bit. You could even just salt and pepper it.

Now for the beer! Cooking with beer is like cooking with wine, if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it! You’re imparting the flavor of the liquid to your food, so if you want your food to taste good you want whatever liquid you’re using to taste good too!

So get that bird over the beer and let’s get grilling! You’ll want to cook the bird using indirect heat, so you’re going to scatter your coals to either side of the bird. We also chose to incorporate some smoke, so we soaked apple wood chips in water prior to barbecuing and sprinkled those on top of the coals. Our grill also has a side smoke box, so my husband also added some coals and large chunks of apple wood in there. If you’re adding smoke to the mix, don’t overdo it with the coals and get your grill too hot. You want this to be a bit of a slower process. The smoke will help in the cooking process. Your cooking time will depend on the size of your bird. If the process is taking more than an hour, you will likely need to add a few additional coals to each side of your grill to keep the heat up. We cooked about a 5 pound bird and it took about 1 hour 45 minutes. Our grill has a thermometer and the temp stayed close to 300 degrees. You want a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast to register at least 165 degrees. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can see if the wings or legs pull easily away from the bird. This is a clue that it is cooked. I highly recommend a meat thermometer though! You certainly don’t want to serve undercooked chicken and chance salmonella poisoning! You can find meat thermometers to purchase at Amazon.com. I love my digital thermometer where I can set the desired temperature and an alarm goes off when the meat has reached that temp.
  
Chicken, like beef, needs to rest a bit after cooking. Once you pull your bird off the grill, let it sit for 5-10 minutes before carving. This allows the juices to distribute throughout the meat and they won’t all run out when you cut the meat. Be careful pulling the bird off the rack or can. Any liquid remaining in there will be very hot!

I hope you enjoy Beer Butt Chicken as much as we do! It’s always a hit with our friends and family!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Cold Water Brewery and Grill – Great New Restaurant in South Lake Tahoe!

20 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Inside Kel's Kitchen in drink, drinks, Food, Restaurant

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beer, dining out, Fish Tacos, Food, pork, restaurant, South Lake Tahoe, tostados, travel

  
If you’ve spent much time at South Lake Tahoe, you’ll remember the Swiss Chalet restaurant. It was a very distinctive building and was pretty much an institution. I’m not sure how long it was open, but for most of my 49 years! Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep up with the times and closed a few years ago. On a happy note though, a new, updated restaurant has opened in it’s place. We had the opportunity to visit the new Cold Water Brewery & Grill for lunch and we were pleasantly suprised with this new dining option.

I’m not a beer drinker, but my husband is on occcasion and decided to try their Mr. Toad’s Wild Rye. He really enjoyed it. I had a sip and did as well. He doesn’t like beers that have that overly hoppy taste and this one didn’t have that.

The food was also incredibly enjoyable! I was happy to see a casual menu that you would expect to find in a brewery. I hate brewery restaurants that try to be hoy paloy!!! To me, a brewery menu should include rustic, down home foods; burgers, tacos, fries, great sandwiches, and lots of fried foods! Cold Water did not disappoint! While I didn’t have a burger, I did enjoy their South Lake Fish Tacos filled with beer-battered, fried Alaskan Cod. They also had a generous serving of avocado and this fantastic watermelon, jicama and cucumber slaw. Simply delicious and fresh tasting!!! My husband ordered the BBQ Pork Tostados. These were also served with watermelon. This combination was surprisingly wonderful and one that we decided to try at home this summer!

This is a restaurant that I would recommend. It’s fairly new, but solid. They don’t have it available yet, but they are working on an outdoor patio and we did see significant progrress during our week in Tahoe.

Give this place a shot! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

  

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...
Follow Inside Kel's Kitchen on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,697 other followers

Kel’s Blog Posts

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,697 other followers

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Inside Kel's Kitchen
    • Join 1,697 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Inside Kel's Kitchen
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: