Failed Cooking
The idea was sound - slice some onions, throw them in a cast iron skillet with some beer, poach some chicken-cheese-poblano sausage, and finish it on the grill. While I was at it, I threw in some bell pepper, garlic, and a bit of turkey bacon into the simmering brew, and finally finished it off with some spinach.
Lessons learned:
- The beer, onions, and sausage are fine together. The rest should have gone in their own sautee pan to get crisp and browned (I want to say caramelized, but technically, it's a different method). The onions should have been thown in there, too, and the beer could have reduced by itself.
- I tasted a faint burnt flavor to the concoction last night, but couldn't put my finger on it. Where did it come from? There was no part of the process that would have burned anything, since it all finished in the beer reduction. It didn't ruin the dish, but I wouldn't have wanted to serve it to anyone else. It dawned on my this morning - it wasn't a burnt flavor, but a strong hoppy flavor from the IPA I used for the beer. Next time - a bock, a pilsner, or even something crazy like a lambic, but nothing so damn hoppy.
