I love cooking with bourbon. Sometimes, I even put it in the food.
Bourbon is great because, well, it just is! It's an authentic American innovation and an iconic part of Southern culture. Plus, it's really really good. In good bourbon you can get as much depth and complexity of flavor as you'll find in a much more expensive Scotch. And the recent renewed interest in making quality bourbon, driven in large part by a Yankee fascination with Southern foods, makes it easier than ever to get your hands on the good stuff.
Good bourbons are generally labeled "single barrel" or "small batch," meaning the bottle was sourced from a single barrel or a small batch of barrels. Single barrel bourbons tend to have more distinctive flavor, but can be matched by some high quality blended small batch bourbons. The bottle will also tell you how old the bourbon is, with a higher age number usually (but not always) meaning better-tasting bourbon.
Really good bourbon has few proper applications. These are the following: 1. Bourbon in a glass; 2. Bourbon in a glass with ice; and 3. Bourbon in a glass with a splash of water. And that's it. No Old Fashioning or Manhattaning or (heaven help us) cola-mixing should occur here. With lesser-quality bourbon, however, you've got more options.
How bourbon is made helps inform its culinary potential. Bourbon is a corn-based whiskey that gets its unique flavor and color from the time it spends maturing in charred oak barrels. The char releases natural sugars in the wood, kind of like what happens with a caramelized onion. These sugars, along with other wood-y chemicals, are transferred into the whiskey during the aging process. This gives bourbon a subtle sweetness that makes it best suited for use in desserts.
Sauces are the easiest and most versatile bourbon dessert application. My favorites are sweet bourbon butter and bourbon whipped cream.
Bourbon butter is a combination of bourbon, powdered sugar and butter whipped together, using ingredients in proportion to your taste. Be careful with this one — once you try it you'll be tempted to eat so much that you'll simultaneously get drunk, become diabetic and need a coronary bypass. It's best enjoyed spread on pound cake.
To make bourbon whipped cream, use 1 cup heavy cream, 4 tablespoons powdered sugar and 3 teaspoons bourbon. Whip it all up real good and enjoy. For an extra treat, put some blobs on wax paper and stick them in the freezer. These semi-frozen sweets can be used as a topping on a whole bunch of southern pie varietals, or you can just eat the blobs by themselves.
For something a little more substantial, try a derby pie — a high point in Southern dessert-making. It's a combination of bourbon, chocolate and pecans. What could be better?
Beat 2 eggs with 1 cup sugar, then mix in 3 tablespoons of bourbon, 1 stick of melted butter and 1/4 cup cornstarch. Stir in 1 6-ounce package of pecan halves and 1 6-ounce package of chocolate chips. Pour into a pre-made piecrust. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Let it cool thoroughly before enjoying.
Whether taken in a glass or by the pie slice, bourbon is a classic American spirit that makes us all feel a bit more Southern. Its sweet applications can add new depth to traditional desserts, though in my opinion it doesn't get any better than my all-time favorite bourbon application: in a glass, all by itself.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2011.