Cooking with Beer: Sausage & Pale Ale Frittata

Cooking with Beer. What a great excuse to sneak in a couple of cheeky midweek beers. It offers an unparalleled depth of flavour with food, and the majority of the alcohol will ‘cook out’, which means you’ll have capacity for even more. No brainer! 

This is the first in a new series of cooking with beer (as part of our Cooking with Booze series); some recipes will be indulgent and others will be easy and economical. I’ll cover all sorts of styles and seasons and inevitably I’ll get pretty merry on the way. Yippee!

A Frittata is a lovely, quick, filling and economical meal; perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner al fresco. You can use up your leftovers and bits and bobs in the fridge and cupboard to produce something wonderfully tasty and healthy in under 30 minutes.

The addition of beer in this recipe will help to deglaze the pan to release more of that charred sausage flavour and add a kick of fresh hop bitterness. The beer I’ve chosen is Redchurch Brewery’s brilliant ‘Brick Lane Lager’. It’s got an assertive bitterness, is clean and crisp with some lovely grassy citrus tones that will match the herbs and Italian flavours perfectly.

So, enough blabbering! Here’s my recipe for a Sausage & Pale Ale Frittata:

Ingredients:

• 8 Large Free Range Eggs
• 1 Red Chilli, chopped and seeded
• 1/3 cup Grated Parmesan
• 8 Basil Leaves cut into ribbons
• 1 Teaspoon Sea Salt
• ½ Teaspoon White Pepper
• 100ml Pale Ale, plus 50ml, divided
• 50ml Milk
• 50g Salted Butter
• 2 Tablespoons Good Olive Oil
• 300g Sourdough or Baguette, cut into 3cm cubes
• 1 Red Pepper
• 1 Potato, cut into 1cm cubes
• 3 Quality Italian-style Butchers Sausages (about 200g)

11.     Whisk the eggs in a large bowl with the Parmesan, Basil, Salt, Pepper, Chilli, the 50ml of Pale Ale and Milk until well mixed.

22.     In a large Skillet pan (10-12 inch) melt the butter gently, add and toss the bread to coat and cook on a medium heat until golden brown. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towel.

33.     Add the Olive Oil to the pan on a medium heat and add the Sausages. Allow the Sausages to cook for a couple of minutes, remove and slice into 1-2cm chunks.

    4.  Return Sausages to the pan and add the Potatoes and chopped Red Pepper.

    5.     After another 1-2 minutes, add the 100ml of Beer and allow to deglaze the Pan. The alcohol may flambé so be careful. Drink the remaining beer.

    6.     Add the bread back onto the pan and arrange it evenly.

   7.     Add the egg mixture and allow to cook until the sides have set, 

      around 4-5 minutes.

88.     Pop the Skillet into a preheated oven (Gas Mark 4, 375 Fahrenheit or 190 Celsius) and cook until the middle has set, some time between 

     18-22 minutes

99.   Serve immediately with a dressed salad and more beer!

‘Brick Lane Lager’ is available in good pubs across London or on the brewery's website for £2.99 a bottle.