Welsh rarebit with beer and melted cheddar
- Preparation 10 min
- Cooking 10 min
- Servings 2 to 4
- Freezing I do not suggest
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🇫🇷 Lille, a small neighbourhood market, and Julien telling me to just try it
I was in the north of France visiting my closest French friends, Julien and Laure. Julien walked me into a small neighbourhood market and put a beer Welsh rarebit in front of me. I lost my mind. Best thing I had eaten in years, no exaggeration. When I got back to Quebec he kept after me until I made my own version, and this is it.
🧀 What is actually in Welsh rarebit
Beer, good cheese, a thick slice of bread and ham. That is the whole list. It is the simplest thing on earth and somehow the best, and you will have to take my word for it until you make it.
My version runs 1 lb (480 g) of cheese over four slices, split between aged extra-sharp cheddar and Canotier de l’Isle, a washed-rind cheese from Ile-aux-Grues in Quebec, grated rind and all. That is a lot of cheese. It is supposed to be.
🍺 No roux, no flour, and the sauce stays loose on purpose
The version I ate over there had no roux, so mine does not either. The cheese melts straight into the beer with the grainy mustard. No flour, no butter, no egg thickening anything. The sauce leaves the pan a little runny and that is exactly how it should look.
Pour it over the toast, slide the dish under the broiler for two or three minutes until the top turns golden, done. Ten minutes of prep, ten minutes of cooking. This Welsh rarebit recipe asks nothing more of you than that.
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🧄 Rub the toast with a cut garlic clove while it is still hot
Toast both sides, then run a halved garlic clove across the crumb before the ham goes on. Three seconds a slice. It was not in the version I ate in Lille, but if you like garlic, do it.
🍺 Which beer goes in Welsh rarebit
A Belgian blond is what I used and what I liked. An amber ale works too. I would steer you away from a brown ale, purely because of what it does to the colour of the sauce.
🥖 Bread: a normal slice, about half an inch
This is an open-faced dish, not a casserole. The bread has to carry the cheese, not drown in it. A Belgian loaf cut into ordinary slices does the job. If your bread is thin and soft, the sauce goes straight through it.
🧀 All the cheese at once, rack in the middle
The cheese goes into the pan in one shot with the beer and the mustard. Not in handfuls, not in three additions. Five to seven minutes over medium heat, stirring, and it is melted. Rack in the middle of the oven, broiler on, never higher than that.
📅 Making it ahead
You don’t. This is not the kind of thing that gets made in advance, and it isn’t long to make anyway. Twenty minutes start to finish. Make it when you want to eat it.
♨️ Reheating leftovers
Oven or air fryer. That is it.
🥄 Whatever is stuck in the pan, do not throw it out
There is always beer and cheese clinging to the bottom of the saucepan. Eat it with bread, or pour it over eggs the next morning. Do not throw that out.
🍽️ What to serve with Welsh rarebit
Homemade fries and a green salad. It does not need to be more complicated than that, and that is how it comes to the table in northern France. My air fryer French fries do the job, and a honey, thyme and smoked paprika vinaigrette over greens is all the balance the plate needs. Four slices feeds 2 to 4 people: two slices each for a real dinner, one each once the fries show up.
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Ingredients
- 4 large slices of bread from a Belgian loaf, about 1/2 in (1.5 cm) thick
- 8 slices Black Forest ham
- 10 oz (280 g) aged extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated
- 7 oz (200 g) Canotier de l’Isle cheese, rind on, grated (or another washed-rind cheese such as Migneron de Charlevoix)
- 3/4 cup (180 ml) Belgian blond ale
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) grainy mustard
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Preparation
- Set an oven rack in the middle position and preheat the oven to BROIL.
- In the oven or in the toaster, toast the slices of bread on both sides. Place them in a large baking dish with high sides, lay 2 slices of ham on each and set aside.
- In a nonstick saucepan over medium heat, add all the cheese at once along with the beer and the mustard, then season with salt and pepper. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring, until the cheese is fully melted. The mixture will be a little runny and that is perfect. Pour it over the slices of bread.
- Slide the dish into the oven and broil for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the cheese is deeply golden on top.
Not quite. Cheese on toast is cheese laid on bread and melted under heat. Welsh rarebit is a sauce: the cheese is melted first, in a pan, with a liquid and a sharp seasoning, and only then poured over the toast and browned.
That extra step is the whole point. It gives you something that pours and coats instead of a slab of grilled cheddar.
The dish started life as Welsh rabbit in 18th-century England, a joke at the expense of people who supposedly could not afford meat, so melted cheese stood in for the rabbit. Rarebit came later as a polite correction, and both spellings are still in use.
The version I make is the northern French one, from around Lille, where they add beer and a couple of slices of ham. There it is simply called a welsh.
A Belgian blond ale, which is what I used and what I liked in this one. An amber ale works too. I would skip a brown ale, purely for what it does to the colour.
You need 3/4 cup (180 ml) for four slices. It is the only liquid in the sauce, so don’t cut it short.
You can try it with a non-alcoholic beer, or with chicken broth. I have never tested either one myself, so I can’t promise you the result.
What I can tell you is that the beer is doing two jobs here: it is the liquid that melts the cheese, and it is a good part of the flavour. Take it out and you are making a different dish.
In northern France, a welsh complet is the same dish with a fried egg on top, usually served with fries alongside. Mine is the plain one, the one I was handed in Lille.
If you want to take it to the next level, put eggs on top. Add eggs and bacon and you are in business for a decadent brunch.
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