Cooking with Malt Extract
In addition to the purpose we know it best for — making beer — malt extract can be a tremendous ingredient to keep on hand in the kitchen. Next time you find yourself with leftover extract after brewday, give it a try as a natural replacement for sugar or an addition to a recipe to add new flavor, enhance other flavors, improve texture and mouthfeel, and bring more color to your culinary masterpiece.
The opportunity to add extract, whether liquid malt extract (LME) or dried malt extract (DME), is nearly limitless — from breads to meats, soups to sauces, or to enhance something on the sweeter side like milkshakes and cheesecakes.
In addition to adding a sweetness and malty flavor, malt extract is used in many chef’s kitchens for its other benefits. According to Richard Platt, Applications and NPD Technologist for Muntons, adding a little malt extract to a recipe will help with the texture of foods — tenderizing meats, improving crumb texture, making cakes softer and lighter and giving cookies more of a snap and crunch. And when it comes to flavor, extract does more than just add it to your recipe — it also rounds out and enhances other flavors, he says. In a beef and vegetable soup, for instance, a tablespoon of extract can bring out the flavors of the carrots and onions that may otherwise get left to pasture.
If using extract as a sweet alternative to sugar, try replacing about half of the sugar called for in the recipe with an equal amount of dried malt extract. Or, feel free to use liquid malt extract, but in that case it is best to reduce an equal amount of water or other liquid called for in the recipe. Using a darker extract will result in more of a malty and roasted flavor, as well as a darker product — which can be appealing in fresh breads or muffins! A word of warning, you may need to keep an eye on the oven or stove when doing an unscripted extract substitution as these products will cook and brown a lot quicker.
When using DME, Platt recommends mixing it with the dry ingredients before adding it to the recipe because it is a hygroscopic ingredient (meaning if it is not pre-mixed it will absorb water rapidly when added by itself, resulting in clumps of malt balls). LME can be added at the same time as the other liquid ingredients.
Usually, unhopped malt extract is what is used to cook with — however there are recipes that can be enhanced with a little bitterness and hop flavor. Muntons has done a lot of experiments with both dried and liquid hopped extracts in foods and Platt said he appreciates these extracts when looking to achieve a beer style flavor without adding beer, or to boost hoppy notes in recipes that do call for beer. “Normally when including beer in baked goods you lose much of the flavor volatiles, so hopped extracts top up the flavor beautifully,” he said.
