11 October 2013

Supermarkets of mystery ~ Larry the Cable Guy Beer Bread - The Reject Shop

Why wait until after the main course, with beer bread you can have your dessert with your dinner.

Larry the Cable Guy, who is he and why does he have his own food range? I pondered this mystery while poking around The Reject Shop one day and I came across Larry the Cable Guy Beer Bread. You might also be wondering why they sell food at The Reject Shop, in particular imported from the USA goods. I wonder that too, they aren't out of their expiry date, but they just seem to mysteriously end up there.



'You Gotta Try It' he cries from the box. Hmmm, OK then, I will! The packet was only $1.50, not really a big risk to take.



The preparation instructions are super simple, you just need beer and butter. Note the important under age drinking message.



I tried to find a can of American beer but all I could get were bottles, so this Bud is for you, Larry. You also need a smallish loaf pan, my one is getting a bit old and crappy from making Alice's meatloaf (from The Brady Bunch Cookbook, yes really) and scraping all the baked on good bits off.



Inside the box is a bag of enriched bleached flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and some preservatives.



Pour the flour into a big bowl, open beer and slowly pour onto the mix. It will go all frothy so use a large bowl. Then regret only buying one bottle of beer.



The mix will be a little lumpy when you start stirring. Don't worry too much, a few little lumps are OK. Just make sure you get all the dry bits together and it's a little bit smooth. This is man food, it doesn't have to be perfect.



Pour the mix into the loaf pan. I lined my pan as it's days as a non stick pan are long gone. I blame Alice.



Melt three tablespoons of butter and then pour all over the top.



Into the oven for 55 minutes. During the baking time I made Buffalo chicken wings and a slaw to go with the beer bread. This wing recipe bakes the wings in a coating of flour so you don't have to deep fry, the crisp wings are then slathered with a hot sauce mix. I changed the sauce mix a little to use what I had on hand, Sriracha chilli sauce instead of Louisiana hot sauce, halved the butter and added a tablespoon of beer (some more miraculously appeared)  and teaspoon of liquid smoke. It was hot and smokey and dribble down your fingers good.



The finished bread. It really had a golden colour and cooked up well, I think the final product actually looked better than the picture on the box. And the eating verdict? It was far sweeter than we expected, it was more like a sweet cake than a bread. The mix of beer and sugar really brought out a sweet flavour, far more than you would get with a USA style biscuit mix or cornbread.

It did go perfectly with the wings, and we have to admit it was far nicer than we expected it would be. And that's the fun of supermarkets of mystery, sometimes you really win. The next day what was left over tasted like stale beer, so there's your excuse to eat the whole lot fresh.

There's a few recipes around the net for beer bread, it's such a basic mix of flour, sugar and beer it's not too hard to make yourself.

Thanks Larry.

Larry the Cable Guy Beer Bread, $1.50 from The Reject Shop, Broadway.

1 comment:

  1. I really love your sense of adventure... whether it be with exotic dishes picked off a menu at a new eatery specifically because they're not written in English lol, or if they're products of intrigue from stalls or supermarkets of mystery :P

    You guys are my kinda people! :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment joy - please keep your musings happy - if you want to complain about a restaurant please do it on a restaurant review site (or your own blog) - we're all about celebrating cultural diversity and the great eats that come along with it :-)

Our ethics: We pay for all our own meals and travel (though sometimes Mum shouts us).