Beer on my Beef Please

By: Kate M. Serrano

Nothing beats a cold bottle and a hot steak on the grill. What’s more cool is pouring the cold one on your meat before grilling also has a positive effect on health.

Using beer as flavor base of marinade dates back to the old Egyptian and Mesopotamian days. Both civilizations are advanced and archaeological evidence suggests their cuisine was rich and flavourful. A tough steak can be extremely difficult to chew. Beer allows you to enjoy the once tough leaner cuts as its alcohol content helps tenderize the meat by breaking down its proteins. The longer the steaks marinate in beer, the more meat proteins dissolve, and the more tender the steaks become.  Plus, the beer combined with citrus juices or vinegar will make the tenderizing process faster than with just the beer alone. Of course beer marinade doesn’t only work on steak and meat. Wheat or white beers can be used to steam hot dogs or to base sauces for steaks. Also, flavoured beers like apricot or lime are good choices when paired with sauces or marinades of the same flavor.

And here is the good part. According to the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, marinating with beer reduces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are the deadly carcinogens that form on meat cooked on a grill or barbeque. Limited exposure to PAHs mean limited exposure to cancer. In an experiment conducted by researchers, they found that dark beers reduced net PAHs by 53 percent. This is twice the effect compared to results from a non-alcoholic pilsner, which reduced only 25 percent.

So next time you plan on a barbeque party, keep in mind that beer-bathed pork and beef may look as healthy as it tastes. Just make sure not to drink the marinade.