An Evening of Beer and Grilling

by Peter on Jun.18, 2009, under beverage, events, grilling, Wisconsin

Last night Wanda and I headed up to Appleton, WI to attend the first “Grilling with Beer” cook-off presented by Wisconsin Distributors and held at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel. It may have not been the most romantic of dates, but we were childless for the next few hours and what’s not to enjoy about beer and grilling? The weather was perfect, warm but not too hot, and the courtyard of the hotel was filled with the mingled scents of grilling meat and charcoal. The cook-off featured 10 chefs, from various styles of restaurants. Each chef was to prepare at least part of their dish on grills during the event and each chef was given a specific beer which they were to use in the creation of their dish, as well as pour during the event. The beers ranged from the mundane such as “Bud Light Lime” and “Landshark” to quirky such as Bud’s newest, “Wild Blue” a blueberry flavored beer, to sublime such as the 2 offerings from New Belgium, “Fat Tire” and “1554.” The food too, ran the gamut from uninspired and poorly executed, such as the boneless rib on a stick that was so tough I couldn’t chew through it try as I might, to well thought out and perfectly presented.

Of all the dishes I tried, three stood out among the rest and 1 tried really hard but just fell short. That dish was a flank steak served with basmati rice and an Indian inspired sauce. Since they were pairing with an IPA (Indian Pale Ale) I thought the Indian influence would be nice, but over cooked basmati and the choice of beef made the dish fail. How often do you see beef in Indian cuisine. They would have been better off with Lamb, which would have been great, or even chicken or pork-anything but beef. The three stand outs that night were the “Urban Shrimp with a 3-1-2 Punch,” the Grilled Pork Eye presented by “Big Tomatoes,” and the Grilled Elk with New Belgium’s “1554.” The shrimp were butterflied open, stuffed with a sliver of jalapeno, wrapped in bacon then grilled and glazed with a sweet BBQ sauce accented with Goose Island’s 312 Urban Wheat Beer. It’s only failing was the couscous salad it was served on. The Israeli couscous had been over cooked and had turned mushy, so on my second trip up to try a shrimp I just tossed the salad aside and ate the shrimp. “Big Tomatoes” Grilled pork was sauced with a Pomegranate BBQ Sauce accented with New Belgium’s “Fat Tire” and served with Grilled Corn and Poblano Ragout. The grilled elk, presented by Stone Cellar Brew Pub had been marinated in “1554″ and served with 2 sauces and marinated artichokes all of which had included “1554″ in some way or another.

We never did get to see who eventually won, though my guess is the shrimp dish, as our time was running out and our daughter was waiting for us to pick her up. We reluctantly grabbed one last nibble, cast our votes for the people’s choice and headed home.

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