Beer and salad may not be the first, or tenth, meal combo you’d normally think of, but it’s a perfect chance to see the potential in two under-appreciated choices for food and alcohol pairings. Beer has always played second fiddle to wine in that regard, even as the craft movement and growing awareness of all the different international beer styles showed people it could have just as much depth and diversity as its more respected relative. And salad, well, it’s salad. It’s dismissed as a side, or as something you eat to be healthy. But of course a well constructed salad can be revelatory, and there are plenty of great dinner salads that can satisfy as well as any meal. So we decided to ask an expert, Chris Cusack, a cicerone and the owner of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse in Houston, to help us create some pairings for the under-appreciated duo of beer and salad.
“When pairing a beer with a salad, it’s important to think about the whole dish, rather than just one component,” Cusack says. “There are many ingredients that, individually, would indicate a certain pairing. However, it’s important to consider the whole dish rather than just one or two ingredients.” He gave us the example of a steak salad and how the pairing shouldn’t just be based on the protein; a steak salad with oil and vinaigrette tastes wildly different than one with blue cheese and creamy ranch dressing.
Pair a classic wedge salad with a boldly flavored IPA or dark beer
Asking Cusack for some specific pairings to work with, his first choice was a hearty steakhouse wedge salad. Combining the meat and crispy greens with pickled onions, bacon, blue cheese crumbles, and ranch, a wedge salad is sharp and rich in equal measure, which can be a lot for most drinks to handle. “For these richer flavors I would pair a West Coast IPA that can stand up to the acid in the pickled onions and the rich blue cheese,” Cusack suggests. West Coast IPAs generally have very strong flavors of hops and the piney notes that come along with them. That bitterness balances out both tart acid and the fatty flavors of rich dressing.
If hops and IPAs aren’t your thing, Cusack has a second recommendation from a different angle, “a black lager/schwarzbier, whose light body but toasty malt notes would pair very well.” Black lagers are not as heavy as porters or stouts, and won’t have the intense pine flavors that turn people off from IPAs. However there are still a good amount of hops working in them to provide enough bitterness to cut through a heavy salad like this, with a second dose coming from the roasted notes. And the taste of black lagers is just light enough to provide a nice contrast to the ranch dressing.
A complex Niçoise salad demands a fresh farmhouse ale
Niçoise salad is a perfect example of the challenge, and opportunity, of pairing salad and beer, because of the wonderful French tendency to combine fresh local ingredients with fatty flavors. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and olives all provide bright and acidic notes, while hard-boiled eggs, tuna, and olive oil bring luxurious richness. This makes for a complete meal, and a lot of things to consider when pairing. “For a Salad Niçoise, I would pair a Saison, or farmhouse ale,” Cusack explains. Saison is a type of farmhouse ale, and it shares a lot of characteristics with the larger category of “farmhouse,” with its signature being a dry, highly carbonated, and light fruit flavor perfect for quenching your thirst during the summer.
“The funky natural yeast notes in Saisons would help balance out the heavier aspects of the Niçoise — the tuna, eggs, and olive oil,” he says. That funk comes from the way farmhouse beers are traditionally brewed, with the rustic conditions introducing natural and wild yeasts that contribute strong fermented flavors. This process can create a lot of unique notes, and saisons and farmhouse ales can even be slightly sour or spicy, but any of those flavors will only contribute to the refreshing flavors that make it perfect for Niçoise salad. And Cusack had one more fun reason, telling us, “you’d be pairing a French salad with a French style of beer!”
Choose a light pale ale when eating a rich Waldorf salad
For his next salad Cusack went American, choosing a Waldorf salad, which means we get to work with plenty of mayonnaise. Traditionally a Waldorf was just apples, celery, and mayo, but even as ingredients have been added to the standard recipe, that spirit and flavor profile have stuck around. Now also usually made with added walnuts and grapes over lettuce, it’s a more complete meal, but just as rich and sweet. That mayo dressing calls for something lighter, and Cusack recommended, “For a Waldorf Salad, I would pair a light-bodied pale ale, particularly something fresh hopped.” Fresh hopped beers use hops that are not dried and instead use right after harvest, which gives them unique notes and a botanical complexity, which really aids the lighter flavors. Some popular brands like Sierra Nevada offer them, and the styles will usually be labeled as fresh hopped in the name.
Pale ales aren’t as hoppy as IPAs, but as Cusack notes, “The creaminess of the mayonnaise and the meaty richness of the walnuts leaves room for a little more hop bite with your beer pairing.” Pales ales should ideally have a nice balance of hops, mild bitterness, and more light flavors of citrus and fruit. They are very crisp and drinkable, which is ideal with rich combos like Waldorf salads, while the fruit in the salad will also bring out the sweeter flavors in the beer.
Smoother beers will avoid overpowering a Caesar salad
There aren’t many salads as popular as the Caesar, and according to Cusack it’s one where you want the beer to let the main course shine. While Caesar dressing can be a real hit of umami and rich fat, the salad is actually relatively simple, normally being just romaine, croutons, and the dressing, so it doesn’t have the wide range of notes that other salads on this list does and could be a bit overwhelmed. “I would pair [the salad with] a blonde ale or a cream ale,” he says. “Something with low bitterness and light malt characteristics. This lets the flavors of the dressing (particularly a house-made dressing) come through without being clouded by the beer.
Both blonde and cream ales are light and easy drinking beers. They aren’t actually creamy as the name would suggest, just smooth, with a refreshing flavor, made so you could down them one after the other. This doesn’t mean they are flavorless, they have a nice bready, mildly sweet flavor, but they don’t steal the show, which is exactly what a Caesar salad needs. It’s just enough to cleanse the palate and make you crave another hit of that salty, cheesy crunch. What’s the point of ordering one if you don’t end up tasting some anchovy anyway?
Meaty Cobb salad should be matched with a fruity and pungent New England IPA
If there is one salad that is throwing a lot at you, it’s a Cobb salad. It combines two different meats, chicken and bacon, with blue cheese crumbles, avocado, and hard boiled eggs at the minimum, and usually throwing in onion and tomato for good measure. That’s not just one meal in salad, it’s a whole buffet, and that means you need something strong to stand up to it. Cusack recommends a New England Style IPA (NEIPA) to go with this robust salad. He zeroed in on the standout flavors saying NEIPAs “will still stand up to the bacon and blue cheese in a Cobb–and provide a delicious contrast.”
One of the ever-expanding list of IPA styles available, Cusack explained that, “these beers are often referred to as ‘juicy’ or ‘fruity,’ but they typically don’t have any added fruit juice — and they don’t have the typical IPA hop bite.” New England or hazy IPAs go through a different brewing processes like dry hopping to squeeze unique fruit and citrus flavors out of the hops while making them less bitter than a traditional IPA. This brewing method produces beers with a huge range of tasting notes, and there is a lot of diversity within the world of NEIPAs specifically, but all of them share the full flavor Cusack is looking for.
Complement the sharp taste of a Greek salad with a cool pilsner
While a lot of these salads have been hefty enough to need a beer that can either cut through that or stand up to it, sometimes what you really want from a drink is something complementary. Greek salads are all about those fresh and briny Mediterranean flavors, and work best with a beer that is equally at home being sipped on a sunny patio. “With a Greek salad I would recommend something with light crispness like a pilsner,” Cusack suggests. “The feta cheese, onions, and Kalamata olives have a delicious sharp bite that will go perfectly with the light body and delightful bitterness.”
Best of all, this pairing also gives the pilsner some space. Being the classic beer of burgers and backyard barbecues, pilsners usually get ignored as merely something light to wash down your food, or as an easier drinking style they can be overpowered by heavy food like that. But pilsners have a balanced malty and lightly hoppy effervescence that can be incredibly tasty, especially if you are grabbing many of the newer craft versions. A Greek salad will help you actually taste the beer and appreciate it, as much as the beer will the salad. That’s really what the best food and drink pairings are all about.
