First off, remember that like most liquids you add to foods, you’ll probably need to reduce the beer down to develop a more concentrated flavor. Also, you’ll want to make sure you select the correct type of beer for your dish. Some beers are sweet, while others, due to higher hops, are more on the bitter side. Before choosing a beer to cook with, consider the flavor notes you want to highlight in your dish and select the appropriate beer accordingly. Lastly, as with wine, follow the age-old adage: don’t cook with beer that you wouldn’t drink.

Once you know some of these tips, you’re ready to start cooking with beer. You’ll find that no matter what you want to cook—beef, chicken, or fish—beer can serve as a great base. Here are some recipes to get you started:

Beer & Brown Sugar Steak Marinade (All Recipes): Dark beer with brown sugar and teriyaki sauce make a fabulously savory coating for any sirloin steak.

Beer Battered Fish & Chips (Food Network): Few things beat this pub classic. If you’re trying to be bit more frugal, feel free to use defrosted, frozen fish. Same great flavor for a far better price.

Beer Braised Turkey Tacos (Food & Wine): Turkey can be a bit bland and dry. But add dark beer, chili peppers, and assorted herbs and spice and you get an unbelievable punch of flavor.

Rich Autumn Pork Stew with Beer (Epicurious): As the air gets crisp, you’ll be happy snuggling up on your couch with a bowl full of this rich stew. The pork cooks slowly in the beer, bringing out all of the ingredients’ flavors.

Double Bacon Beer-Braised Cheeseburgers (Rachael Ray): Okay, I never said this was going to be a healthy list. But you know this dish sounds amazing. Just do yourself a favor and go for a job before taking a bite out of this burger.

Laura Troyani heads up Marketing and Business Development for Plummelo. Not content with just being another behind-the-scenes pencil pusher, Laura decided to give blogging a shot and writes practical, everyday tips for the home cook (or aspiring home cook). Laura’s favorite foods are ice cream, olive oil, ice cream, parmesan cheese, ice cream, and occasionally ice cream. Laura’s favorite recipe.

Two of our more Irish-inclined guest bloggers are planning a bit of a food extravaganza for St. Patrick’s Day. It has everything to do with fun and flavor, and not a lot to do with luck.

Robin Horrigan, guest blogger

Our house is covered with shamrocks and the local leprechauns have been getting into a lot of mischief. The head leprechaun in charge, ahem, that’s me, is planning a fun feast for dinner on the 17th.

My husband and I both love hearty Irish cuisine and always find March to be the perfect, blustery month to enjoy it. This week we roasted pre-seasoned lamb chops from Whole Foods and made Martha Stewart’s recipe for colcannon, the traditional Irish potato & cabbage casserole, to complement the meal. Tomorrow I am starting the day by baking Irish Soda Bread to go with Beef & Guinness Stew, and we’re finishing off with the Hot Nutty Irishman, an Irish coffee drink with Frangelico, Kahlua, Baileys and whipped cream while we snuggle up to watch one of our favorite movies, “Waking Ned Devine.” All leprechauns invited!

Julie Hallinan, guest blogger

I am not Irish, but my last name certainly is. I decided that was reason enough to cook corned beef and cabbage for the first time in my life, coupled with the fact that we have a special guest for dinner tonight. I found an easy corned beef, cabbage, carrot and potato recipe to prepare in the slow cooker–similar to this one. I can smell it now, fragrant after simmering all day. (Good thing I like cabbage.) Stay tuned for the reviews.

And don’t forget the Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes topped with “frothy” Baileys Irish Cream [cheese] frosting!

When I was invited to join the group, I had hesitations. Making dinner for a football team’s worth of people seemed daunting, and the initial outlay of money in ingredients was a bit stressful–cooking for myself meant that hefty grocery bills could be mentally amortized across a week or two. There were also the ideological considerations: all of us were vegetarians, but at the time I was much less adventurous than most. My friend Ray, while breathlessly encouraging me to jump onboard, rhapsodized about an entree based largely on tempeh they had all enjoyed the previous week; I felt myself subtly recoil. Tempeh?

Ultimately, the one incontrovertibly strong deciding factor that impelled me to say yes was my own need for connection. What drew me to the group initially–along with Ray and several other members of the group, both male and female–was the fact that it represented something all of us were craving. A healthier relationship with food, a familiar and beautiful ritual in the middle of days that often felt uncertain, the chance to nurture those you cared about when you previously hadn’t been sure you could even take care of yourself: dinner group offered our group of twenty- and thirty-somethings a chance to actively shape who we wanted to be as eaters and sharers of food.

The 12 friends split into 6 pairs and each duo cooked a dinner for the group once every 2 weeks. That was the simple part. I quickly learned to scale up my cooking for many people, plan menus to stretch ingredients, and cook multiple courses simultaneously on my two-burner studio apartment kitchenette. (The secret there is to constantly stay in motion; cooking becomes a kind of high speed, twirling ballet.)

What excited me most was the thrill of menu planning. While not overly competitive, I will admit that all of us quickly learned what each pair’s strong points were–and that we took pleasure in outdoing ourselves week after week. Over dinner, we’d talk about classes, our jobs, our hopes, and dreams. Sharing each other’s homes and tables night after night led to a desire to nurture each other–and also a desire to surprise.

One group excelled at inventive salads; another pair’s forte was exquisite Southern comfort food. Two others provided wonderful picnic-esque spreads (they were living on a boat at the time, so this was no surprise). My partner and I specialized in combining unusual, unexpected tastes.

For me, these often took the form of desserts–including the quirkily titled beeramisu, which has become a staple of mine. (Don’t let the name fool you; it’s a subtle and elegant dessert. I usually replace the stout with a fruity Belgian beer, like Lindemans Frambois Lambic or Peche.)

The experience of needing to pull food together quickly while keeping it fresh and exciting has become a signature part of my cooking style. Cooking for multiple people, while it can initially seem like a chore, becomes an incredible gift when what you’re doing is using food to make people think, or smile, or open up. I treasure what I learned about myself in that group, the capacity I discovered that I have to give.