Given the longstanding love affair between beer and grilled and barbecued meats, you could be forgiven for overlooking a less-talked-about pairing opportunity. And I’m not talking about pizza, burgers, hot dogs or even cheese, all of which are beer matches made practically in heaven. I’m talking about beer and salad.
OK, so it’s not the most obvious choice, but beer is extremely versatile, and can be paired wonderfully with almost any dish — it’s just a matter of finding the best pairing to unlock a combination of flavors that is more than the sum of its parts.
For simplicity’s sake, I’m looking at the first-course salads that tend to be more delicate, yet contain numerous individual ingredients and strong, flavored dressings, rather than heartier-style salads, and divided my recommendations based on the style of dressing. The best pairings are often with lighter-bodied, more nuanced beers to complement the delicacy of the salad. A beer that’s too strong or too heavy will run roughshod over the subtle flavors in your salad.
Creamy dressings
In the United States, the most popular salad dressing is ranch, which in the 1950s was first pioneered in California by Steven Henson for his Hidden Valley Ranch steakhouse near Santa Barbara. Ranch, alongside other creamy dressings, such as Caesar, Thousand Island and Green Goddess, pair nicely with hefeweizens, weissbier and other wheat beers, where the smoothness from the added wheat keeps them from overwhelming the salad.
Hoppy pilsners are another good choice, along with red ales, amber lagers and blonde ales. Although they’re harder to find, a rye beer is also great because of the spiciness the rye adds.
Stronger creamy dressings, like blue cheese, carry tangy flavors that can stand up to heartier beers, even dark ones, so I’d recommend a doppelbock or dunkelweizen (a dark wheat beer).
Vinaigrettes
Oil and vinegar is easily the oldest type of dressing, with evidence of the ancient Babylonians using it nearly 2,000 years ago. The French later refined oil and vinegar dressing, adding mustard, ketchup, paprika and other herbs, but the most popular one in California — according to sales data from 2023 — is Italian dressing, which adds herbs, spices, chopped vegetables and garlic into the mix. Other similar dressings include honey mustard, balsamic and other vinaigrettes.
For lighter beers, great choices are a Belgian witbier, whose signature orange peel and coriander pull out a salad’s nuances, or a saison or farmhouse ale, especially one that exhibits notes of pepper from the yeast used in brewing. Other good choices include kölsches, wheat beers and amber lagers.
Or you can lean into the dressing’s vinegary flavors and choose a sour, more acidic beer such as a Belgian lambic, gueuze, or Berliner Weisse. A sour Flanders red can also pair wonderfully with your salad, especially if it includes seafood.
For a wedge salad, try an IPA, a porter or a stout, but not an imperial one.
If your salad includes fruit, a complementary fruit beer, especially a fruit wheat beer, can work wonders.
Another approach is to ignore the dressing in favor of a specific component. For example, you can pair a Waldorf salad and its signature walnuts with a nut brown ale to give more weight to that ingredient. A rich pale ale works well, too.
Here are two more pairings for a couple of the most popular types of salads.
Ale Caesar
Caesar salads, which originated in Mexico, are one of the most popular varieties today. I’m personally fond of pairing mine with a German helles, a light-bodied, malty lager, but pilsners, blonde ales or cream ales are solid choices, too.
Cobb
Since a Cobb salad commonly includes more meat than many other salads, it’s one of the few types that will work well with a hazy IPA. Naturally, the same is true for any other heavily meaty salad. A spicy Belgian tripel is also a great pairing.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.