Saint Arnold's One Pot Showdown and Pub Crawl Reminder

Saint Arnold's One Pot Showdown was a blast.  Hundreds of hungry beer lovers lined rows of booths at the event.  Saint Arnold's One Pot Showdown is a food and beer event that is sure to surprise you.  A few interesting dishes were the peanut chili, sweet potato soup, rattlesnake chili, jambalaya, and beer sorbet.  The beer sorbet was made by combining Saint Arnold's Amber, simple syrup, and lime juice, and then it was processed through an ice cream maker. The rattlesnake chili tasted fine, but the thought of eating snake was just a bit unnerving.  I'm always down with eating weird foods, but snake gave me the chills.  All photos by John Knox. 

The winning dish was chosen by a panel of celebrity judges, including Amy Davis from KPRC.  @ATXDriveClean (my other twitter handle) went on a drive from Houston to Austin and back with Amy.  The judges chose a Sweet Potato Soup made with Saint Arnold's Root Beer as the winner. Like a thick sweet potato stew with marshmallow goodness, this was a truly interesting and award deserving dish.  The recipe is courtesy of Justin Renfrew- Hill of the winning team, One Man and a Monkey.  Recipe below.

Also, don't forget about the Saint Arnold's Pub Crawl on Feb. 19th.  Deets here!

Mac and Cheez anyone?

Hungry for some rattlesnake chili?

Amber Sorbet was yummy delicious!

Brock drawing some prizes.

Spicy Jambalya made by the Bay Area Mashtronauts

Winners of the 2010 One Pot Showdown.
Saint Arnold's Root Beer Sweet Potato Soup by Justin Renfrew- Hill
Ingredients:
- Bacon - 1 pounds
- Fluff (marshmallow spread) - 1 small container
- Yellow Onion (diced) - 2 large
- Sweet Potato - 2-3 pounds
- Crab Boil - see instructions on side for shrimp
- White Pepper - to taste
- Cajun or Creole Seasoning - to taste
- St Arnold Root Beer - 3 bottles
- Parsley - one bunch
- Heavy cream - 1 quart
- Marshmallows - one bag, prefer "mini"
Preparation
- Dice yellow onion
- Peel and cube sweet potato
- Dice parsley
Instructions:
- Marinate bacon overnight in root beer.  (One bottle for pound of bacon)
- Throw bacon in cold pot and bring to medium high heat.  Cook all bacon to desired consistency (recommend crispy)
- Remove bacon from pot.
- Add diced yellow onion to pot and sweat.  Want onions to be golden brown/caramelized
- Remove onions from pot.
- Add water and crab boil to pot and bring to a boil (read instructions - recommend following "shrimp" quantities).
- At rolling boil add sweet potato.
- Boil sweet potato until soft and remove from heat.  Soak potato - the longer they remain in the crab boil, the more "heat" they will absorb.  We recommend about 10-15 minutes.
- Dump out water and add sweet potato back into pot.
- Combine, sweet potato, heavy cream, root beer and marshmallow fluff.  (Recommend starting with equal parts heavy cream to root beer and only combining half of what is listed above.)
- Looking for a consistency between baby food (too thick) and a bisque (too thin).  (Marshmallow will make thicker, root beer will make thinner, heavy cream about in the middle but will make slightly thinner)
- Add back to a heat source and put over low to medium heat stirring constantly
- Add in bacon, onions and chopped parsley.
- Add white pepper and Cajun seasoning to taste.  (Personally we like it a bitter spicier, but we made it relatively mild for the competition)
- Serve hot topped with a marshmallow (or two) and parsley.