Kim DeStratis
LookUp1977A Failed Experiment
April 7th 2011 11:48
As my blog title (hopefully) suggests, I am not a professional or trained chef. By day I am an Interior Designer, and as such do have a lot of creativity on hand. This gets channeled into my many hobbies of which I consider cooking to be one. I love trying new recipes, challenging my baking, and even, as in this case, learning from something gone wrong.
Last weekend my husband and I went to my parent's house for Sunday dinner. My family loves to spend time with each other, and my mom's amazing ability to cook is definitely a huge reason I also have a passion for it. However, the food (BBQ pork chops, yum!) is not what gave me the idea for my eventual kitchen dud. My husband and I selected Guinness as our dinner beer and as we were finishing up both dinner and the rich stouts, we joked about pouring some over ice cream for dessert. Chris then looked at me, almost in a daring way, and tells me that would probably be good, if I could turn it into a sauce.
So I'm of course up for the challenge!
Unfortunately, I think there's a reason this is not a popular sundae topping. Traditionally a reduction is just setting a liquid, like balsamic vinegar or wine in a saucepan and burning off the liquid at a med-low temp till a syrup remains. So I poured the Guinness in a pan and lit the fire, assuming this was going to be relatively simple. I added maybe a Tbsp of sugar, somewhat afraid of messing with it too much, and let it go. When it had reduced by about 3/4, we scooped some honey granola vanilla frozen yogurt into small bowls and, without tasting the reduction, poured it on top. While it wasn't so bad we didn't finish the ice cream (come on now) I will definitely not be doing this again. Guinness is usually a pleasantly chocolaty beer with little bitter aftertaste, but what had been left after my reducing was all bitter, no chocolaty, and it made the ice cream taste a bit burnt. I think next time I'll just make it a dark chocolate ganache, can't go wrong with actually adding chocolate, right?
Last weekend my husband and I went to my parent's house for Sunday dinner. My family loves to spend time with each other, and my mom's amazing ability to cook is definitely a huge reason I also have a passion for it. However, the food (BBQ pork chops, yum!) is not what gave me the idea for my eventual kitchen dud. My husband and I selected Guinness as our dinner beer and as we were finishing up both dinner and the rich stouts, we joked about pouring some over ice cream for dessert. Chris then looked at me, almost in a daring way, and tells me that would probably be good, if I could turn it into a sauce.
Unfortunately, I think there's a reason this is not a popular sundae topping. Traditionally a reduction is just setting a liquid, like balsamic vinegar or wine in a saucepan and burning off the liquid at a med-low temp till a syrup remains. So I poured the Guinness in a pan and lit the fire, assuming this was going to be relatively simple. I added maybe a Tbsp of sugar, somewhat afraid of messing with it too much, and let it go. When it had reduced by about 3/4, we scooped some honey granola vanilla frozen yogurt into small bowls and, without tasting the reduction, poured it on top. While it wasn't so bad we didn't finish the ice cream (come on now) I will definitely not be doing this again. Guinness is usually a pleasantly chocolaty beer with little bitter aftertaste, but what had been left after my reducing was all bitter, no chocolaty, and it made the ice cream taste a bit burnt. I think next time I'll just make it a dark chocolate ganache, can't go wrong with actually adding chocolate, right?
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Comment by LookUp1977
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Ok so the stouts were not as good on ice cream as expected but that is the adventure in trying it out! Definetly an A for effort in trying that. I'v tried a similar attempt but it was cherry grenadine , vodka, and a shot of redbull. I threw it in a sauce pan on low heat added about 2 tablespoons heavy cream and it was on and poppin. My tastbuds were elated. You should try that yummy