Cooking with cocktail bitters
Angostura Bitters: if you ever make an Old Fashioned or Manhattan, you almost certainly have it in your cupboard. Not much of a bartender? Even so, I recommend quickly getting one of those weird bottles with an oversized label. For example, to use as a flavour enhancer in your lamb stew.
Let’s start at the beginning. A bitter is a strongly alcoholic, spiced drink with a concentrated flavour. Bartenders often use a few drops as a zip tie to bring the ingredients in their cocktail together, to add complexity or, conversely, to accentuate a specific flavour in their creation.
Exquisite flavour
In the (professional) kitchen, bitters are rarely used, by contrast. A survey of chef friends leads nowhere when we ask about their favourite applications for the curious stuff. Still strange, because on the label of the iconic Angostura Bitters I read the following:
‘It imparts an exquisite flavour to soups, salads, vegetables, gravies, fish, meat, fruit-juices, grapefruit, mixed cut-fruits, stewed prunes, stewed figs, preserved fruits, jellies, sherbets, water-ices, ice-cream, sauces for puddings, hard sauces, plum pudding, mince and fruit pies, apple sauce and all similar desserts, regulating the quality according to taste.’
My first thought: What the f… Seriously? How is it that I never thought of this before? The urge to work through that entire list in full is enormous, but it might be a better idea to start with a dish I’ve made more often.
Taking it to a higher level
Cooking with bitters, then. The longer I think about it, the more logical it seems: those bitters are incredibly powerful (don’t take a sip, just don’t) and the sweet, fresh or spicy notes of aromatic spices, roots and citrus fruits can do nothing but take your ingredients to a higher level. Just as with cocktails, to add complexity, accentuate flavours or bring them together. I’m especially optimistic about the future of my favourite stew of all time, Georgina Hayden’s lamb shanks (from Slow, published by Becht).
Of course I’ll keep you posted on the progress, but anyone who already feels like experimenting with Angostura Bitters or one of the many flavourful varieties, widely available thanks to the flourishing cocktail scene, should check out the Angostura Bitters recipe page or read more in this article on Grub Street. And do you have a super-tasty suggestion? Drop me a line!
Also read:
- Trend tip for the weekend: open your own coffee shop at home for one day
- Savoury coffee is the coffee trend of 2025: what can you expect?
- The supermarket coffee aisle is increasingly empty: what’s going on?
