How To Properly Inject Your Meat With Beer For The Best Flavor

Beer and meat are a match made in culinary heaven. There's a reason a cold one goes so well with burgers and barbecue; the crisp, hoppy bitterness of a good beer makes an excellent foil to the richness of fatty meat. And that doesn't just apply to beverage pairings, but also to incorporating beer into the cooking process.

Injection is a method typically used in barbecue to push flavors deep into the interior of a large piece of meat, such as a pork shoulder or a whole chicken. This is done through the use of a large needle-tipped apparatus called an injector, using a combination of liquids, such as a sauce, a marinade, or a brine. Beer works excellently to magnify the meat's flavor and tenderize it from the inside, as the enzymes in the drink work to soften tissues in the meat's muscle. 

Using a mix of beer, butter, broth, and seasonings, you can use an injector to slowly push the liquid into the meat in various places. The end result will be rich with added flavor from the injection liquid.

While the prospect of injecting meat may seem a little daunting at first, it's a simple process and easy to get the hang of. However, blindly shoving the needle into the meat won't get you the results you're looking for. It's best to be thoughtful and methodical about the process to ensure as much of the beer mixture as possible gets into the right spots in the meat.

Inject into the thickest parts of the meat; for poultry, that means the breast and drumsticks, and for other cuts that means the areas where there's the most meat around the bone. Push the injector in at an angle. And to avoid making your meat into Swiss cheese with too many holes, you can put the needle in the same hole at different angles to get the liquid into different areas.

Be sure to depress the plunger slowly; doing so too quickly can cause the liquid to bubble up or squirt out. However, you'll want to fill the injection holes completely to ensure the meat is saturated. 

Beer comes in a variety of different styles, each with distinct flavor profiles, acidity, bitterness levels, and alcohol content. So, when choosing a beer to use in a marinade for injection, which variety should you reach for?

While most varieties of beer will work in a pinch, it's ideal to stay away from sour beers, heavily fruited beers, or otherwise flavored beers that may impact the taste of the meat. Beers that are too light, conversely, won't impart much flavor at all. Ideally, you should go for a beer such as an amber ale or a more robust lager. These will have a more mild flavor while still blending favorably with the other marinade ingredients, maintaining moisture and tenderizing the meat. 

IPAs or stouts will also work, depending on your cut of meat. A stout might work well with a nice brisket, for instance, but it may not taste as good when injected into a chicken. Use your best judgment — there's no harm in sampling the beer before using it.