Cooking with Beer Review: a laid-back cookbook for people who actually drink the stuff

I picked up “Cooking with Beer” because I like beer and I’m lazy in the kitchen. If a book can help me use the random bottles lying around in my fridge and turn them into dinner, I’m interested. I’ve been using this ebook version for a couple of weeks, tried a handful of recipes, and flipped through most of the 300+ pages to see what’s worth cooking and what’s just filler.

Right away, the book feels more like something made for normal people than for restaurant chefs. The recipes are written in a pretty straightforward way, no fancy techniques, and the author doesn’t insist on some rare craft beer you’ll never find. Most of the time it just says something like “lager” or “stout”, which means you can work with whatever you already drink. That’s a big plus if you don’t live next to a specialist bottle shop.

During these two weeks, I tried a couple of mains and one dessert: a beer-braised meat dish with a dark ale, a lighter chicken recipe with a lager, and a stout-based dessert. All of them came out fine on the first try, which says a lot about how clear the instructions are. Nothing blew my mind, but everything was solid and got eaten without complaints, which is basically my standard for a weeknight recipe.

Overall, my first impression is that this book is a decent fit if you’re curious about cooking with beer but don’t want to dive into complicated stuff. It’s not perfect: some recipes feel a bit generic, and there’s no super deep explanation of beer styles or food science. But if you’re just a regular home cook who wants ideas for using lagers, IPAs, and stouts in food, it gets the job done pretty well.

Let’s talk taste, because at the end of the day that’s what matters. I tried three recipes: a dark beer stew, a lager-based chicken dish, and a stout dessert. All three turned out good, not mind-blowing, but solid home cooking. The beer flavor is usually present but not too strong. If you expect the dish to scream “beer” in every bite, you might be a bit let down. It’s more of a background note that adds a bit of bitterness or richness depending on the style you use.

For the stew, I used a medium-bodied dark ale instead of a stout, as the recipe suggested a darker beer but not a specific one. The result was a rich sauce with a slight bitterness that worked well with the meat. My only small complaint is that the recipe was slightly under-seasoned for my taste. I had to add more salt and a bit of acidity at the end to balance the bitterness from the beer. Once I tweaked that, it was a very satisfying dish, especially with bread on the side.

The lager chicken recipe was lighter. The beer mostly helped keep the meat moist and added a mild malty taste. If I hadn’t known there was beer in it, I might not have guessed right away. So, in that case, the beer is more of a cooking liquid than a strong flavor. It still worked, and it beat using plain water, but don’t expect something radical. The dessert with stout, on the other hand, had a more obvious beer kick, especially that roasted, coffee-like note you get from dark beers. If you don’t like that, you might find it a bit much, but I enjoyed it.

Overall, the taste of the recipes is solid home-cooking level: comforting, filling, and pretty easy to adjust. They’re a good base to tweak. If you like stronger flavors, you’ll probably end up adding more spices, herbs, or acidity than what’s written. If you prefer milder food, you can follow the recipes as-is and you’ll be fine. For me, they’re decent templates that you can make your own after one or two tries.

On value, I’d put this book in the “pretty solid for the price” category. You get over 65 recipes spread over 300+ pages, so there’s enough content to keep you busy for a while. It’s not just a thin booklet with ten ways to make beer batter. There’s a good mix: mains, snacks, and desserts, with both meat and vegetarian options. If you cook from it regularly, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.

Compared to other themed cookbooks I’ve tried (like ones focused on wine cooking or barbecue), this one sits in the middle price range and offers a similar amount of content, maybe a bit more. The difference is that beer is often cheaper to cook with than wine, so over time the recipes are also cheaper to make. You can use normal supermarket beers, and the book doesn’t push you toward fancy bottles, which keeps the overall cost of each recipe reasonable.

Where it loses a few points is that some recipes feel a bit generic and could almost be regular dishes with the beer swapped in for stock or wine. They’re still good, but if you already own a couple of general cookbooks, you might feel some overlap. Also, there’s not a huge amount of background content or technique explanations. If you like a lot of theory and storytelling with your recipes, you might feel you’re paying mainly for the recipes themselves, not for any extra knowledge.

For me, the value is in having a focused collection of recipes that actually use the beers I already drink, without needing special shopping trips or advanced skills. If you’re into beer and cook at home at least a couple of times a week, you’ll probably use this book enough to justify the price. If you only cook occasionally or don’t care much about the beer angle, you might be better off with a more general cookbook.

For a cookbook, design mostly means photos and how realistic everything looks compared to what comes out of your own oven. Here, I’d say the pictures are pretty solid. The dishes look appetizing but not like they’ve been built with tweezers in a studio. When I made one of the stews and a tray-bake style dish, what I got on the plate looked roughly like what I saw on the page, just a bit less neat, which is normal for a home kitchen.

The visual style leans slightly pub/comfort food, which fits the beer theme. You see a lot of rustic plates, big bowls, sauces, and some desserts that look quite rich. It matches what you’d expect when you cook with beer. There are a few lighter and more colorful recipes too, so it’s not all brown foods, but yes, a good part of the book is hearty stuff. If you’re looking mainly for ultra-healthy, low-calorie dishes, the design and the photos already tell you this isn’t that kind of book.

What I also liked is that the layout per recipe is clear: ingredients on one side, steps on the other, and the pictures don’t get in the way of reading. Some cookbooks cram too much into one page or split a recipe over several screens. Here, most recipes fit comfortably and you don’t have to scroll like crazy with greasy fingers. When I cooked, I usually needed to scroll only once or twice for the whole thing.

If I had to nitpick, some photos feel a bit generic, like stock images from a general food book rather than something that screams “beer dish.” Not a big problem, but sometimes you forget the beer is meant to be the star. Still, in practice the design makes it pleasant to use, and I never felt lost or annoyed by how things were laid out. For a mid-priced cookbook, I’d say the design is more than decent and does what it should.

On the ingredients side, the book is quite user-friendly. Most recipes use stuff you find in a normal supermarket: onions, carrots, basic herbs, common cuts of meat, pantry staples like flour, sugar, butter, and so on. I didn’t have to visit a specialty store for any of the dishes I tried. That’s a big plus if you’re cooking after work and don’t feel like hunting down rare items.

The beer part is also handled in a practical way. The recipes usually call for a type of beer (lager, IPA, wheat beer, stout) instead of a brand. That means you can just use what you already drink or whatever’s on offer at the shop. I used a cheap supermarket lager in one recipe and a slightly better craft stout in another, and both dishes turned out fine. Obviously, the better the beer, the nicer the flavor, but you don’t need to pour an expensive bottle into the pan for things to work.

What I appreciated is that the book doesn’t force you into weird combinations or super niche beer styles. There are a few mentions of hoppier beers like IPAs, but nothing that requires you to know the difference between ten sub-styles. If you know the basics — pale, dark, hoppy, wheat — you’re good. Some recipes even say you can swap one beer type for another if that’s what you have, which matches how people actually cook at home.

On the downside, the book doesn’t go very deep into explaining why a certain beer type works with a certain dish. It’s more “use a lager here” than “use a crisp lager because it balances this and that.” If you’re curious and like to understand the reasoning, you might find that a bit light. But in practice, for everyday cooking, the ingredient lists are simple, flexible, and don’t cost a fortune, which is pretty much what I want from a book like this.

The presentation is honestly one of the strong points of this book. On Kindle, the layout is clean: clear titles, ingredient lists nicely separated, and steps that are short enough that you don’t get lost scrolling back and forth. I used it on a tablet in the kitchen and didn’t struggle to follow along, which is not always the case with cookbooks that get messy when converted to digital.

The book is organized mainly by type of dish and sometimes by beer style, so you can quickly jump to what you want: mains, snacks, desserts, etc. There’s a decent mix of things that look like pub food and things that feel a bit lighter or more modern. You’re not stuck in the usual stew-and-chili territory, which I appreciated. That said, some sections do feel a bit repetitive, like a few variations on the same general idea with just a different beer or a minor twist.

One thing I liked is that the author usually mentions the type of beer instead of a specific brand. So it’ll say lager, IPA, wheat beer, stout, and sometimes give a short note like “a hoppy beer works well here.” It’s basic, but it’s enough to not feel lost. If you’re a real beer nerd you might wish for more detail, but for regular folks it’s fine. It keeps the book practical instead of turning it into a beer encyclopedia.

In daily use, the presentation makes it easy to open the book, scroll a bit, pick a recipe, and start cooking. There’s no long intro before every recipe, no life story about the author’s childhood. It goes pretty quickly to ingredients and steps, which I appreciate. On the downside, if you like heavy context or deep explanations about pairings, you won’t find much of that here. It’s more “here’s a dish, here’s the beer you need, let’s cook,” which, for me, works well enough.

In terms of effectiveness, I’d say this book does a good job of getting you to actually cook with beer instead of just reading about it. After about two weeks with it, I went from “I sometimes splash a bit of beer into a pan” to actually planning dishes around what beer I had. The recipes are straightforward enough that you’re not scared to try them on a weeknight, which is key if you want a cookbook to be more than shelf decoration.

The instructions are clear and broken down into manageable steps. Cooking times and oven temperatures felt accurate for the recipes I tested. I didn’t end up with raw meat or overcooked mush, which happens more often than it should with some cookbooks. The fact that the recipes are written by a non-professional cook (according to one of the user reviews) actually shows in a good way: the language is simple, and there isn’t a bunch of chef jargon.

Another thing that works well is how the book gently pushes you to experiment. Because it talks in terms of beer styles instead of exact brands, you naturally start thinking, “What if I swap this lager for that pilsner?” or “What if I try a slightly hoppier beer here?” It’s not a technical course, but it does get you comfortable with the idea that beer is just another cooking ingredient you can play with. That’s a useful mindset if you like to improvise a bit in the kitchen.

The weak point is that if you’re already very comfortable in the kitchen and already cook with wine or beer, you might not learn a lot of new techniques. The book doesn’t go into advanced stuff or deep pairing theory. It’s more about giving you 65+ reliable recipes where beer fits in logically. So, it’s effective for beginners and casual cooks, a bit basic for advanced ones. But for its target — people who like beer and want easy recipes — it does the job well.