Available in a wide variety of options, bitters can add tons of flavor to sweet or savory dishes. Rey Lopez for The Washington Post
We all go through phases in life. Like baking sourdough bread or regrowing scallions on windowsills. Or wearing hot pants (hey, they’re back!). You may have gone through a cocktail phase, particularly when we were isolating at home, which may have led you to buy all sorts of bottles you could get your hands on. Now, you might find yourself with a stock of cocktail bitters collecting dust.
Lucky for you, bitters are for more than just drinks – you can cook and bake with them, too. Bitters’ ability to balance sweetness, cut through rich foods and add an extra oomph to dishes overall means that their uses in the kitchen are endless.
“Although any bottle labeled as ‘bitters’ will usually have a bitter component (typically from a botanical element such as gentian, cinchona bark, wormwood or the like), the bitterness is a base for a range of other aromas and flavors,” spirits columnist M. Carrie Allan wrote. “You can find bitters that taste of flowers, of tea, of citrus and pepper and spices, of leather, of nuts, of jerk seasoning, of smoke and of combinations of these. Ginger and lemon. Coffee and cocoa. Crawfish boil.” This means that they can add tons of flavor to all sorts of dishes.
Bitters are blends of herbs, spices and other flavorings steeped most commonly in alcohol (though there are nonalcoholic versions available), which makes them really no different from vanilla and other extracts. As such, the easiest way to put bitters to use is as a replacement for some or all of the extract called for in baking recipes.
I’ve used orange bitters in a simple chocolate cake, and a user on Reddit recommend adding cardamom bitters to banana bread, which “adds a subtle something-something to the end product.”
In “Snacks for Dinner,” cookbook writer Lukas Volger uses them in his “Old-Fashioned” olive oil cake recipe. “I simply wanted to re-create that delightful experience of an Old-Fashioned cocktail but in cake form, flavoring it with bourbon, orange and Angostura bitters,” he said. “I found that a plush, moist, olive-oil rich loaf cake was a perfect new vehicle.”
You can add bitters to your breakfast, too. “I tried it with my oats, and I loved it,” Volger said. “I found that especially in oatmeal that’s topped with fruit – whether fresh, or cooked down like in a compote or a spoonful of jam – bitters add a beguiling new dimension, usually in an herbaceous or botanical direction. For example, one I remember liking a lot was buttery pan-fried apples, a spoonful of thick yogurt, and several shakes of walnut bitters on top of creamy steel-cut oats.”
Other sweet uses include adding bitters to whipped cream, pie fillings and custard bases for ice cream just before churning.
On the savory side, they can be added to salad dressings, sauces, soups and stews.
For chef Christian Irabién of the forthcoming restaurant Amparo Fondita in Washington, D.C., Angostura aromatic bitters are a go-to “spice bomb” ingredient when making stews and braises, such as mole de olla and boeuf bourguignon. He said bitters play well with Mexican dishes in general, such as birria, picadillo or barbacoa, and adds celery bitters to an aguachile on the restaurant’s opening menu.
Barbecue and grilling expert Meathead Goldwyn admitted he’s “late to the party, but for my next book I am doing a lot of outside-the-box experimenting,” he said. He likens bitters to liquid spices, “but they bring flavors that you can’t get from your spice rack.” Though there are lots of options to choose from, he’s found that cocoa and orange bitters work best for him in sauces and marinades. He recently started adding 1 1/2 tablespoons of cocoa bitters to his Chocolate Chili Barbecue Sauce from his cookbook “Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling,” which he likes to slather on ribs. He also adds 1 tablespoon of orange bitters to his mustard-based barbecue sauce that he serves with pulled pork.
If you’re staring at your bar cart and wondering where to begin, “I’d recommend tending toward the (bitters) that seem the most obvious in a food setting, like those walnut bitters, or fruit-forward bitters like cherry bitters, or spice-forward ones like cinnamon,” Volger said.
Just note that a little bit goes a long way. Take a cue from the cocktail world and start with a few dashes, keeping in mind that you can typically add more (unless you’re baking with them). But if you’re using nonalcoholic bitters, you’ll need to use a heavier hand as they aren’t as potent as those made with alcohol.
When bitters are added to a recipe also makes a difference. If added earlier in the cooking process, they will have time to mellow slightly and meld with the other ingredients in a dish; if added later on, they keep more of their intense aroma and flavor, and of course they will also be more, well, bitter.
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