We live in an era of vegetarian menus and Meatless Mondays, yet to some, plant-based eating is inconceivable. Fortunately, I’ve found the phrase “Hey, beer is vegan,”* inspires understanding among even the most incredulous omnivores. If nothing else, humanity is united in its enjoyment of frosty, fermented beverages.
Since beer is universally appreciated, I wondered if vegan beer cheese soup might be the Rosetta Stone of food – the dish that decodes veganism for omnivores. A quick check of the traditional recipe revealed basic ingredients: beer, dairy and broth. St. Louis is home to myriad delicious craft beers. Nutritional yeast is a vegan wonder-food with an abundance of salty, cheesy flavor. Vegetable broth is easy to make and easier to purchase. How hard could it be to pull a vegan beer cheese soup together?
Plenty hard. My first attempt yielded a thin broth, not velvety like the milk- and cheese-filled version. Adding soy milk didn’t help; my reaction to the strong aftertaste can be visually illustrated by a retching cat. I tried to thicken the soup with a slurry, a fancy culinary term to describe a mixture of a cold liquid and a raw starch such as flour. Because I was feeling oh-so-clever, I used beer as the liquid for the slurry. Clever, but totally wrong. The texture was indeed sublime, but once incorporated into the soup, it tasted devastatingly bitter.
If anyone could fix my beer soup recipe, it was Andrew Fair, executive chef of Urban Chestnut Brewing Co., and a fellow who doesn’t flinch at “vegan.” Fair explained that hops, a key ingredient in beer, become more bitter-tasting the longer and hotter they cook. (To get technical, it’s the alpha acids in hops that are heat-averse.) Since heat correlates with bitterness, my beer slurry, which had to be cooked to neutralize the flour taste, would never work. Neither would deglazing the pan with beer, another of my bright ideas you should try only if you want to make something completely inedible.
With soy milk and a slurry both off the table, I went back to basics. For creaminess, I added a diced potato to the mirepoix, a sophisticated-sounding French word for the mix of chopped carrots, onions and celery that forms the base of many soups. Then, I sprinkled the sauteed vegetables with flour and browned them lightly, which gave my soup thickness, minus any overt starchiness. A final purée yielded the smooth, buttery texture that appeals to omnivores and vegans alike.
Since I now understood that the wrong beer would ruin the entire batch of soup, I did a little research (a food writer’s term for day drinking) on several of UCBC’s brews (all UCBC beers are vegan) that were low in International Bitterness Units. IBU is a measurement of a beer’s bitterness on a scale of 1 to 120, because apparently wincing isn’t enough scientific evidence. Clocking in at 16 IBUs, the light, fruity Schnickelfritz will certainly work, if that’s what you happen to have handy. But the beer that stole my heart and became my favorite for both the soup and post-soup-making consumption, is Apotheosis. It’s a farmhouse ale fermented with saison yeast, which produces yummy peach and apricot notes. At 18 IBUs, it’s able to withstand a gentle, two-minute warmup at the end of the soup-making session.
I then tackled the issue of cheese. Ironically, it was the least challenging aspect of this vegan recipe. As I had hoped, nutritional yeast, which is available in the bulk aisle section of most grocery stores, added a cheesy flavor that paired perfectly with the Apotheosis.
Because the ingredients are so specific, my vegan beer cheese soup isn’t as simple as the traditional version. But the whole of this warm, savory soup adds up to a tasty, complex flavor that’s greater than any of the individual ingredients – particularly if you serve it with pints on the side.
* While the ingredients in beer are vegan, some breweries may use animal products during the filtering process.
VEGAN BEER CHEESE SOUP
4 TO 6 SERVINGS
4 Tbsp. vegan margarine, such as Earth Balance Buttery Sticks
3 celery stalks, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 large onion, diced
1 large russet potato, peeled and diced
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbsp. flour
5 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
3 bay leaves
1 cup Urban Chestnut Apotheosis or other low IBU beer*
¼ cup plus 2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
1 Tbsp. yellow miso paste
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
• In a large Dutch oven, melt the margarine over medium-high heat. Add the celery, carrots, onion and potato. Cook 8 minutes, until the vegetables begin to brown.
• Lower the heat to medium. Add the salt, pepper and flour, stirring to coat the vegetables with the flour mixture. Cook 3 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the flour begins to darken.
• Add the broth, scraping up any burned bits from the bottom. Add the bay leaves. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to low and let simmer 10 minutes, until the vegetables soften and the soup thickens.
• Remove the bay leaves. Stir in the beer, nutritional yeast and miso paste. Cook 2 minutes on low heat. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Remove from the heat.
• Using an immersion blender, blend the soup to a smooth texture. Divide among the bowls, garnish each with parsley and serve immediately.
* Urban Chestnut Apotheosis is available in growlers at UCBC Midtown Brewery & Biergarten, 3229 Washington Ave., St. Louis and UCBC Grove Brewery & Bierhall, 4465 Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314.222.0143, urbanchestnut.com
This article appears in February 2016.