For St. Patrick’s Day, make it with Irish beer

St. Patrick’s Day deserves Irish food, and Irish food deserves Irish beer.

Not to be poured into a glass next to your plate, although that is a good idea, too. I’m thinking more of what is becoming a slow-moving but notable trend: cooking with beer.

Beer is an ideal ingredient in food: It has more flavor than water, pairs well with both meat and vegetables and packs a lot of complexity in every drop. The only downside is that it tends to be bitter, but there are ways around that – often involving the judicious use of just a bit of sugar – if you want to use beer to bring out the fullest potential of your favorite dishes, savory and sweet.

Ireland, of course, is one of the great beer-brewing nations of the world. Cooking Irish food with Irish beer is – well, it’s magically delicious.

When you think of Irish beer, you probably first think of Guinness; it may well be the single product most identified with the Emerald Isle. It has been around since 1759 (impressive, though Germany’s Weihenstephan has been made since 1040), and its taste, color and even the way it feels in the mouth are instantly recognized around the world.

Even the head – the foam that rises to the top when you pour it — is unique. It has such a strong structure that, theoretically, you can place a bottle cap on the top and it won’t sink into the glass. And if a bartender draws a shamrock into the head as he pours it, you should (again, theoretically) still be able to see it when you have finished your pint.

I have tried both of these experiments. They both worked.

There are other stouts, and even other stouts from Ireland, but if you are going to be cooking with it, you might as well go with Guinness. It’s Guinness. It’s iconic. It’s special.

For my first St. Paddy’s Day dish, I made a classic: Beef and Guinness Stew. This stew is perhaps the ultimate expression of Guinness; it brings it to its pinnacle. It is Guinness’ finest moment.

As the beef slowly simmers in the beer, their flavors blend and meld. The beef takes on an unusual richness, while the Guinness loses its beery qualities. Very few other ingredients go into the pot – just a couple of onions, a carrot or two, a clove of garlic, thyme and tomato paste.

The idea of using beer to make a stew has been around for a long time; it is the secret to the famous Belgian dish called carbonnade flamande. But that is a relatively complicated dish, or at least it has a wider variety of ingredients to play off the floral qualities of Belgian beer. With Beef and Guinness Stew, the Guinness does most of the work by itself to create the hearty flavor.

Any Irish stew, of course, should be served with boiled potatoes or the Irish version of mashed potatoes called champ. And to sop up the leftover liquid, why not use homemade bread — especially bread that is made with Irish beer?

Lazy Irish Beer Bread is so ludicrously fast and easy it does not deserve to be called bread. Bread should take some effort, at least. If you’ve kneaded it, you know you’ve made bread. And even no-knead bread has to sit out for hours to allow it to rise.

Lazy Irish Beer Bread has none of that. You can make it, start to finish, in an hour, and that counts preheating your oven (if your oven is quick to preheat). And most enticing of all, it is made from just three ingredients: self-rising flour, sugar and Irish beer or any beer of your choosing. I chose Harp, because it is a lager with a smooth and fairly mild taste. I did not want a bread with too powerful a flavor.

The result was surprisingly good. I’ve made better breads in my life, but none that have been remotely as easy as this. The effort-to-flavor ratio on this one is off the charts.

Finally, I went back to Guinness for dessert. Guinness finds its way into a surprising number of desserts, including ice cream. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to make Mr. Guinness’ Cake.

Mr. Guinness’ Cake originated in an advertisement for Guinness some years ago. According to Darina Allen, author of Irish Traditional Cooking, the ad read, “Over the past couple of centuries, our beer has acquired a modest reputation, but our cake is still little known. This seems a pity, for one enthusiast has described it as like eating dreams.”

And so it is, if you dream of eating fruitcake. I happen to like fruitcake, and this is better than any ordinary fruitcake. My colleagues agreed, and surely they don’t all like fruitcake. The cake was reduced to crumbs almost immediately after I put it out to be sampled. And it had not even been allowed to rest as long as it was supposed to.

According to the recipe, the cake was supposed to sit untouched for a week before eating. Fruitcakes are often meant to age for a week, a month, or even a year to allow the best possible flavor to develop and for the alcohol to suffuse the entire cake. This one was gobbled up the morning after it was baked.

Keeping it a week longer would only make it taste more like Guinness.