Well here we are; the 2013 competition season is upon us and we will once again start another quest for a Grand Champion trophy. We had many top ten and even top five finishes in 2012, and managed to place 9th overall in the Mid Atlantic Barbecue Association for the season, but we have yet to break through for 1st place overall in a KCBS competition. We kept with our annual tradition of making the 1st competition of the year the Go Naked BBQ Show in the parking lot of Mason Dixon BBQ Services. We loaded up the, ‘BBQ House’ and headed to Green Castle, PA in hopes of starting the year with a bang! Our first bang came less than a mile from our trailer storage area when oncoming traffic hit a deer which then bounced off our trailer and off to the side of the road. Somehow we got very lucky, and besides having to remove a little venison tartar off the bottom frame, we came out of it unscathed. I’m not sure how well Big Green Eggs can handle a direct deer strike, but had it been two feet higher we may have found out.
Our setup at Go Naked 2013.
GoNaked is organized and hosted by Eric Forrester which means it’s always a fun competition and things are almost guaranteed to run smoothly. Despite a little breeze on Friday (something like 35 mph gusts) the weather was nice and sunny. By Saturday it was calmer and nearly perfect for BBQ … Sauceless BBQ that is. No, we didn’t forget anything on our packing list, NO SAUCE was the rule this year. Only chicken and ribs are cooked with no electronic assistance at Go Naked. The added twist for 2013 was that it was, “Even more naked” meaning no sauce was allowed for either category.
This is not a normal rule for a competition; actually this is the first time we’ve even been in a ‘no sauce’ situation. Personally we like good dry rubbed BBQ … In our house, sauce is served on the side and rarely used, but competitions are different. Teams were asked to ‘stay within the spirit of the competition’ when people started inquiring as to what ‘sauce’ really is. We may have taken the spirit a little more to heart than we should have because we literally turned in dry rubbed ribs and chicken and learned that most teams still had ‘glaze’ on their meat, which based on what we were able to taste, not only blew our flavor out of the water, but also catered to what most judges have grown to expect. Our food was a little spicy because we used mostly the same flavors we use on a sauced piece of meat, but the sweetness was lacking and we did little to make up for it. So needless to say we did not get a call; as matter of fact the only time we heard our name all weekend was when Sal kept asking where PepperMonkey’s beer cooler was! We finished middle of the pack which for this competition is just fine with us. But without question, we are hoping for a strong start to the season in our first ‘official’ competition in Annapolis the first weekend of May.
Cosmo’s perplexed look when he realized we were turning in boxes with no sauce.
Congrats to those who did get a call, especially to Dan and the Drillin’ and Grillin’ crew for their Grand Champion victory. Special thanks to Eric for having faith in us to design and make all the custom awards for this years event. We tried to ensure that Dan knew his giant cutting board had a food safe finish on it so it was completely functional, but he made it clear that he would not be using it to cut anything on! Great job guys!
Dan and the Drillin’ and Grillin’ crew showing off their first ever GC trophy!
Reserve Grand Champions at the 2012 Keystone Classic
We ended the 2013 season on a high note by placing 2nd out of 58 teams at this year’s Keystone Classic. Keystone is probably one of our favorite competitions that we regularly attend. The staff and organizers are wonderful and very responsive to anything anyone needs. There is always plenty of room for every team and the competition keeps growing and growing. We would not be surprised to see 70 teams at this one in 2014.
The weekend started out a little shaky for us. On our way up to Harrisburg, PA, we almost had an incident just outside of Baltimore. Traffic came to an instant stop as we were cruising along and I had to get on the breaks so hard our trailer tires actually locked up and started squealing. I didn’t even look at the cars in front of us, I was watching our Green Eggs in the rear view mirror praying they wouldn’t come hurtling out of their straps, and flying into the truck. Luckily they held on and we have managed to avoid an incident with our fragile eggs over three years of competing.
The amazing meatballs that never made it to the judging table.
The Keystone Classic has many ancillary categories in addition to the main four KCBS categories. Overall we did eight different turn ins this weekend. It’s common for teams to not partake in the extra categories as it can be a distraction from the main event, but we enjoy cooking so much that we always like to try our hands at something new and see what the judges think of our experiments. Friday night was ground beef and bologna. Erin created a killer meatball recipe which was served with a wonderful pasta. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, we missed our turn in window. There is always a ten minute window when everything has to arrive at the judges tent, and if you are one second late, they won’t accept it and you have to take the walk of shame back to your camp holding your completed dish. We were very frustrated because we have never missed a turn in. In this case we pushed it to the limit, and that ended up being about ten seconds too late. The neighbors enjoyed it, and we all of the sudden had plenty to eat for dinner, but we learned a lesson and luckily it wasn’t one of the important KCBS turn ins. We don’t know anything about cooking bologna; our bologna turn in was basically a cuban sandwich and we replaced the ham with smoked bologna. We liked it, the judges seemed to think there were better turn-ins than ours! On Saturday we turned in the people’s choice chicken legs and also a dessert. We didn’t win the coveted “Leg lamp” that the best legs teams receives, but we did get second place with our pumpkin spiced creme brulee. We were given three eggs and told the only rules were to use the three eggs in a dessert. My favorite dessert is creme brulee so this was a no brainer. Luckily the judges liked it too.
2nd place dessert!
This was our second reserve grand champion finish, we have yet to catch the elusive grand champion, but we got within three points of it this weekend. We heard our name on the first call of the day for the official KCBS categories, 10th place in chicken. This was a surprise to us as we nearly avoided a chicken disaster this weekend. That was followed by a 3rd place call in ribs; we were hoping they’d be top ten because they cooked well. We were surprised by an 8th place call in pork. We knew our brisket was good, and were hoping for a top ten place there as well. That would mean a call in all four categories which is pretty rare for us, the only other time being our other RGC in Tracey’s Landing. Our brisket ended up being 4th place. With four top ten calls we knew we had basically hit four home runs. Unfortunately for us, Black Cat BBQ hit two grand slams by getting 1st place in both chicken and ribs. They edged us out by three points for the well deserved grand champion trophy. Congrats to Jen and Jack for an impressive victory!
We used our new Green Egg to cook our chicken this weekend. We had practiced at home and our regular cooking technique seemed to work just fine so that’s what we went with. 45 minutes into the cook we took the temperature of the chicken and knew we were slightly behind schedule. No worries, we cranked up the heat a little and let them cook. The second time we checked, we were still behind, no worries, crank up the heat some more. The third check was getting close to the time where they had to come out, and they were safe to eat … barely, and far from the desired temp we wanted to achieve. Now there were worries, and we really cranked up the heat! We pulled them off the smoker at the very last minute and the last time I checked I was cooking them at 370 degrees, about a 100 degrees more than we normally would! We were surprised when we tried a piece and actually really liked the texture. Unfortunately by cranking up the heat, we ended up with a little more smoke coming out of the egg than we would like, and chicken is like a smoke sponge. It was more smoky than we prefer, so we were actually very happy to get a 10th place call after such a non-standard cook. I guess chicken on the new Egg will require a little more practice.
The other three categories were fairly uneventful. Everything went as scheduled and we were able to take a few deep breaths and relax after our near disaster with the chicken. We had plenty of good ribs to fill the box, our pork was very juicy and flavorful, and our brisket was on point as it has been most of the season. We felt pretty good after we were done turning everything in, but had no idea if we had done well enough to get 2nd place.
We had a great time as always seeing old friends and competing in our last KCBS competition of the year. We are already looking forward to next year and will be practicing much more this winter than we did last winter. We are so close to getting first place, we need to focus on perfecting every detail in order to push us over the edge. Hopefully our neighbors and co-workers won’t be too sick of eating BBQ by next spring!
Cooking at dawn inside the Shenandoah Speedway
We did a better job this year at planning our competitions ahead of time than we have in the past, but there is always room to be impulsed! After learning that Smoketoberfest had to be cancelled, we were kind of bummed that we only had one competition remaining this season. We started shopping around for one more competition in September and before we knew it, we were pulling our gear through the Shenandoah Valley to compete in Smokin on the Track. This was a first time event and Carey and his crew did a pretty impressive job overall. There were a low number of teams competing, but there was still plenty of good competition! Congrats to Kit of Deguello BBQ and Mike of Aporkalypse Now for their first and second place finishes respectively.
We were the first team to pull into the middle of the raceway Thursday afternoon and got our choice of spots. Carey already had everything laid out. Spots were marked off, electrical drops were in place and load tested, and water was available for each site. After we got set up we enjoyed the cool evening as we sat around a fire and reviewed our notes for the weekend. We have gotten to the point where little review is needed because we are cooking the same every weekend. Because this was a small comp and there wasn’t a whole lot at stake for us, we decided to break the unwritten rule of competition BBQ and do many different experiments, some untested, all at once. We used a different rub on our pork, we used a different rub on our ribs, we modified our injection for the pork, and we cooked a brisket from a new source which we had never used. The good news is it all came out pretty darn good!
We were already busy cooking friday. We offered to assist the Air Force Sergeant’s Association by cooking up about 30 lbs of pulled pork and 20 lbs of pulled chicken for an event they were having at Andrews Air Force Base. We did the pork ahead of time and froze it and decided to do the chicken Friday night and put it in the RV freezer. We also threw on some chops and baked potatoes for dinner, then retired early in preparation for the competition.
Cooking up some yard bird for the Air Force Sergeants Association
Our experimental brisket was smaller than those that we normally cook. We did our best guess at the timing adjustment and were happy when it finished on time, or so we thought. There was something mysterious about our overall cook this weekend. We did four butts and one brisket and everything seemed like it needed to cook to a higher temperature than normal to give us the texture we were looking for. Our brisket and butts reached our initial target temperature on time. Normally we pull them within one or two degrees of this temp depending on the feel of the meat. Our brisket had to go almost ten degrees higher than normal before we were happy with how it felt, and the butts had to do the same. This was the first time this had happened all year, but we knew it was more important to go by feel than by some pre-conceived number on a thermometer, so that’s what we did. Our brisket ended up getting us third and our pork came in fourth, so clearly we did the right thing by ignoring the fact that our thermometer said the meat was done!
Our chicken came in 8th but our ribs were not so good. No call on ribs as we came in 12th in this category. The ribs also were not quite as tender as we like them when we normally would take them off, so we continued cooking them until it time to slice them … we needed 15 more minutes! We used the best rack we had, but knew they were going to hurt our overall score. We ended up with a 4th place overall, which wasn’t too bad considering the strange cooking time/temps we encountered as well as all of the experiments we were trying. We had a great time and the weather held out all weekend which was a nice change compared to the last few competitions we’ve done. We cooked next to a new team, Life is Good but BBQ is Better. They heard their named called right away at the awards ceremony and that was exciting. Good work for your first comp! We also got to know the crew of Late Empire BBQ at little more. These guys pulled off a 9th place overall with probably the least amount of equipment of any team at the competition … Well done! We’ve determined that if this team sticks with it, we are going to be watching them cross the stage a lot more in 2013.
The people’s choice for this competition is worth mentioning here. We can honestly say, although it was truly an experience, this was the first competition where we have decided that if they don’t make some changes, we will not be doing people’s choice next year! We went through the health inspection and had the proper forms on file with no problems. We planned on having three extra pork butts to pull and serve for people’s choice; usually that is more than enough. Unfortunately the schedule had people’s choice starting at 1:30, which is exactly the middle of the brisket turn in window. Trust us, the public does not understand when you tell them you are busy and they have to wait for three more minutes. After turning in our brisket, we scrambled to make our camp presentable and within 5 minutes, we had a line of people waiting for samples that was so long, we couldn’t even see where it ended. We handed out 1 oz cups stuffed with pork at record pace and went through about 25 lbs of pork in less than half an hour. We had four racks of ribs in the warmer, so we started handing out ribs … gone within minutes … chicken thighs …. gone within minutes. We gave out every ounce of meat we had cooked all day in less than an hour and the line was still long when we had to close up shop … sorry Shenandoah, but we had no idea there would be so many people lining up for samples! All that work and we only got 4th place in people’s choice! We couldn’t help but notice that the top teams in the competition got the least people’s choice votes; and the lower scoring teams in the competition rocked people’s choice … interesting.
The people’s choice line started like this … and never went away!
Erin happened to check Craig’s List postings for used Big Green Eggs while we were traveling home and discovered a used Egg living less than an hour from our house. Our normal conversation on the way home from a competition revolves around our desire to have a little more cooking space, so we were excited about the idea of having another Egg. After contacting the owner, we decided to take advantage of the good deal. We unloaded the truck and headed out to pick up our ‘new’ Egg. It turned out that there were mistakes in the ad and the Egg was not quit what was advertised. After some negotiating, we still came home with our 5th Big Green Egg and after a few evenings of TLC and many new parts, it has now worthy of being our new chicken cooker for our next and final competition!
The newest member of our family!
We only have one more competition left this year. On Oct 4th we will be on our way up to Harrisburg, PA, for the Keystone Classic. We really like this competition and this year they have already maxed out their alloted number of teams (over 50) with a waiting list of others hoping to still get in. We’re hoping to end the season on a high note, so we’re hoping to hear our name in Harrisburg!
The beautiful sky after the storms cleared out.
Pickin in the Panhandle 2012 brought 43 skilled competition teams into Hedgesville, WV, all hoping for a shot at the Jack Daniel’s invitational. The invite automatically comes with the grand champion trophy at this competition because it is the only KCBS sanctioned competition in WV. We knew, like always, that because of the chance to get to ‘The Jack” that there would be a good mix of skilled teams competing. Looking to the left of our camp we saw three teams: Pellet Envy, Cool Smoke, and Hambones by the Fire; maybe “skilled teams” was an understatement.
The BBQ was smelling so good Cosmo couldn't stop drooling.
The weekend started off very hot and humid. We were very happy to have our air-conditioned (and waterproof) RV. We arrived with our meat already trimmed, but we had two ancillary categories (anything meat and dessert) that we had not even practiced, so we spent Friday doing food prep and finalizing the recipes for the extra categories. Erin was prepared with some good ideas that were quickly revised into plans B and C. Saturday rolled around and everything was right on schedule. We knew that there was rain on the horizon and possibly even severe storms. As turn in time approached the rain closed in. We were able to walk chicken while it was still dry, but once the ribs came off, Erin checked the radar one more time and all I remember hearing was, “There is a red cell coming!” We looked at six beautiful racks of ribs that had just come off the smoker and knew outside was not the place to be. Within minutes we moved our operation inside. The rain started just after noon and I stepped outside to make sure everything was waterproof. I barely made it out the door and everything started shaking from the wind. I saw our 10’x10′ canopy raising off the ground and was able to grab hold of it, but the 50 mph force was enough to pull me off the ground with it. By the time I landed, two of the legs had folded and I wasn’t far from becoming a human kite. Erin came out to assist and during the downpour we were able to pull the walls down and lay the 10’x10′ on the ground. Ribs had to be cut in four minutes, so we headed back inside soaked to the bone. High winds and rain seem to be a common scenario that has played itself out at almost every competition this year, except this time we lost some equipment AND it happened right in the middle of turn in time.
The aftermath. If you look close there are broken canopy legs, a torn tarp, and everything is soaked.
Back inside we were able to towel off and focus on the ribs with only a few minutes until turn-in. Our ribs looked and tasted really good this week. I told Erin on Thursday, after I trimmed the ribs, that it was going to be a good rib week. After we built the turn in box, my feelings had not changed. Pork and brisket were both decent, but we weren’t sure if there was enough wow factor to win over a table of judges. After turning in our brisket we weren’t done yet. We still had to turn in our ancillary categories. Finally at 2:30 we were done with turn ins. Still soaking wet, we sat down in our wet chairs and had a beer. It had been a long day and dealing with cleaning up from the aftermath of the storm was not a motivating thought.
Our chili cups came in 3rd, but that didn't even earn us a ribbon!
After all that work we only heard our name once at the awards ceremony, it was for the ribs which we knew were top ten ribs. We ended up with 16th in chicken, 8th in ribs, 23rd in pork, and 22nd in brisket for a 15th place overall. We had mentioned to a newer team just the day before that with the level of competition that comes to Pickin in the Panhandle, anything in the top 15 is a good accomplishment. I think deep down we were hoping for a little better, mostly because we had such a strong finish the week prior at Tracy’s Landing. We certainly won’t hang our heads for finishing 15th overall; however, we will be putting pressure on ourselves to do better at our last two competitions this year. Congrats to Tuffy of Cool Smoke for a very strong Grand Champion finish. Tuffy is having the type of year that we all dream of in the competition world.
We learned this week that Smoketoberfest had been cancelled due to circumstances beyond the organizer’s control. We decided we would still like to compete a couple more times this season, so we have added Smokin’ on the Track in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to our schedule. This is the first year for this competition, so we are excited to see how things will be set up at the speedway. After that we will finish the season at the Keystone Classic in Harrisburg, PA. Hard to believe the 2012 season is almost behind us.
Our first ever reserve grand champion – and an awesome hand carved trophy to show for it!
This was a week of redemption for us. Just three weeks ago we were driving back from Pittsburgh trying to figure out what went wrong after completing our worst competition of the year. It is hard to look at your scores for your dead ass last pork and not want to make drastic changes, but we knew deep down we had to stick with the logical advice we’ve received from other successful teams all season long (Thank you Deguello, Dizzy Pig and 3Eyz). We knew our pork at Pittsburgh was not consistent with what we had cooked all year, and our very minor changes to our chicken seemed to have brough our chicken closer to the top than it had been in the last few competitions. So what did we do different at Tracy’s Landing? Answer: Nothing. We pushed our last competition out of our minds and focused on the task at hand. We had the added pressure of making sure we didn’t embarrass ourselves in our home town and in front of family because Erin’s dad and stepmother (Tom and Renee) flew into town from Florida just to see us compete. This was our first time cooking in front of family.
The Mullins’ and crew did a great job of organizing the event and getting everyone in position as early as Thursday night. They hosted a competition that really went smoothly from our perspective. Kudos to everyone that volunteered to support this Elks Lodge sponsored competition, we think it’ll be even bigger and better in 2013. We ended up setting up camp next to Big Bully BBQ, a team we had never met, but hope to cross paths with again. A great group of guys (and gals) who shared a few tastes of some delicious home made sauce in exchange for a few box building tips. Friday night the weather was warm and clear and after the eggs were set up we cooked a great salmon dinner for Tom and Renee and welcomed them to the neighborhood.
Erin saucing our chicken as her dad looks on hoping for a sample.
Saturday was the prep day because Tracy’s Landing is unique in having the actual competition on a Sunday (If you are taking votes Dave, we’d still like to see it happen on a Saturday)! We were happy with all our meats so prep was a non event. With all the dirty work done, we again cooked for the family and then settled in for a relaxing evening of storm watching and chatting over a few drinks with Dan from Drilling and Grilling. We always enjoy our conversations with Dan and appreciate his laid back attitude. Just before we called it a night we checked the weather radar just in time to throw on a t-shirt and get outside to hold down our 10 x 10 and our awning as a powerful storm cell passed directly over us. We, along with everything else, were completely soaked; luckily the rain doesn’t really affect the eggs, so all was well.
The big day arrived and it was business as usual. Chicken went as planned right down to the minute and within one degree of where we like to see it. Ribs came off on time and we had more than enough to choose from. Pork made us nervous only because we had dead ass last in the back of our minds, but it wasn’t talked about and we did the best we could. Brisket gave me a short moment of panic. As I started slicing, the flat turned out to be about 1/2″ thick from top to bottom. No worries at first, but after the fifth slice I still was staring at 1/2″ thick slices due to a rather large fat pocket in the middle of the flat. I stopped, we brain stormed an alternate plan just in case the slices never improved, then I started hacking away hoping I’d find a few good slices. It turned out that we were able to get just enough ‘normal’ slices out of the end of the flat. The mysterious fat pocket vanished and all looked good. In the end our box looked identical to every brisket box we’ve turned in all year.
Erin and her Dad walking the first box to turn in … Erin is hard on herself when it comes to boxing, so seeing a smile is a good sign!
The work wasn’t done after brisket turn in because it was time for peoples choice pork which was served up right at our cook site. Tom and Renee went out to pimp PepperMonkeyBBQ to the locals, and our friends Peter and Jane even stopped by to offer extra hands and serve up pork to the crowd. Our allotted cups sold out very quickly and we were feeling good about the samples we gave out. We truly could not have pulled that off without everyone’s help. It really turned out to be a group effort and we no know we could not have done that with just two of us. Thanks everyone!
Thanks to Tom and Renee as well as Peter and Jane for stepping in and helping us serve our pulled pork to the crowd.
So on to the results … We fell a few votes short of the peoples choice award, but we certainly gave them a run for their money. Congrats to Baby got Butt for winning over the crowd with their pork! Out of 47 very good teams, we managed to get 9th place in chicken, 8th place ribs, and 3rd place pork. We have never had 4 top ten calls in a competition so a brisket call didn’t seem likely; however, we walked for the fourth category in a row to pick up our 5th place brisket trophy. We now knew this was our best competition so far and when we didn’t hear our name called in the top ten rundown, I knew we either got 11th, or 2nd … thankfully we were called for the reserve grand champion, beat out by none other than the best team in the country, 3Eyz BBQ. Congrats 3Eyz, you have pulled off the impossible and then some, keep it going! Congrats to every other team who got to walk as well.
We were grateful for the opportunity to get this call. The organizers had two large, hand carved trophies for the RGC and GC and the GC got the choice of which one they wanted. Dan Hixon didn’t hesitate to offer us the first choice of trophies even though his team earned it. We have always considered 3Eyz a class act since we met them three years ago and they have been cheering us on at every competition. It’s likely that this was Dan’s way of congratulating us for finally getting close to the top. The truth is, which trophy we carried away was the least of our concerns, so hopefully 3Eyz is happy with the one we left for them!
Thanks to everyone who has encouraged us all year. Our hard work finally paid off and now we will see just how consistent we can remain. There are three competitions left and we will be putting pressure on ourselves to be successful. Our next challenge is fast approaching as we are packing up to compete in West Virginia this coming weekend.
The temperatures in PA were much cooler than we anticipated for an August competition.
We had high hopes for ourselves heading up to Pittsburgh. This was our first attempt at the Sam’s Club National BBQ Tour and we picked an unfortunate contest to have an ‘off’ day. Laurel, MD would have been the closest Sam’s Club event for us but we had a conflict, so we decided to make the road trip to Pittsburgh knowing full well that for some reason, when our food is judged in PA, it often does not do as well. Not sure what the explanation for this is, but it’s been proven to be true once again.
Truth be told, we didn’t really have a bad day. Not having competed since late June, our cook went surprisingly well. We spent our off time tweaking our chicken recipe. Our chicken has been in a downward spiral since we took first in Annapolis. We changed back to our original chicken supplier and changed the cook times to try and keep it from drying out. The chicken came out with good tenderness, but the taste still wasn’t ‘wowing’ us. We took 11th which is about where I thought it belonged. There may be a few more tweaks in the future to get more flavor into it.
Our ribs have been consistent all year and this week was no different. We had several good racks to choose from and had no problem filling our box with ribs that had great color, good tenderness, and were fairly moist. The judges decided they were worthy of 7th place. Would have loved to get them into the top five, but overall, we were pleased with the ribs.
A few ribs left over after slicing and boxing … 7th place
Skipping ahead to brisket, we have been fortunate to get some good calls in brisket this year. We did hear our name called in brisket, but it was for 10th place, so not worthy of a walk. While trimming the brisket before the cook; we both noticed it was even more fatty than our normal slab of meat. When it came time to slice and box, we had to trim a lot of fat away, and the burnt ends were also more fatty than we would have preferred. There was also an issue with a hotspot in the XL egg. Luckily it was noticed early on and I was able to place some foil to protect the end, but because of this, we were limited in where we could get our slices from. I think it may have been due to the fairly strong wind blowing into the lower vent. All in all, we were accepting of 10th place knowing it wasn’t our best brisket of the season.
Our brisket passed the bend test, but wasn't our best. 10th place.
So onto pork, which has had us scratching our heads since we were handed the score sheets. We certainly didn’t walk in pork. We actually didn’t even get a call in pork. Why? Most likely because they don’t recognize LAST place in any category. Yes, 26th out of 26th. I take full responsibility for a bad cook any time it happens, and it does happen, but last place really shocked us. We did have issues with the pork. The butts weren’t like our normal butts. Once we had them prepped we knew we’d have to make some changes to our normal boxing. Because they’ve been coming out a little overdone the last few comps I pulled them two degrees earlier than I have been. I’ll take the blame for assuming this was a good move and not doing a close examination of them once they came off the cooker. We could tell they were undercooked and much tougher than usual while we were pulling it. That being said, there were some very flavorful pieces with good moisture and texture. Because it was less tender than our usual product, we decided sliced was the way to go. We knew other teams had done well with sliced pork, but we had not turned in sliced up until now. We did not expect a call in pork because of all the issues, and assumed we had turned in a middle of the road product. Quite obviously, the sliced we turned in was not like the slices that other teams are doing well with; our overall score for this category was a peppermonkeybbq record low, 138.8570, and that equates to Dead Ass Last.
On the bright side, we got the memo on the Tyson’s Best Wings on the Planet contest a little late, but we were up for the challenge. After the cooks meeting friday we ran into Sam’s Club, grabbed some wings and sat down to build a wing recipe with what ever we had on hand. I blended two of our favorite rubs, Erin whipped up a mixture of our regular BBQ sauce and a spicy fruit glaze … and we made wings! We ended up getting third which was rather surprising considering the effort that went into them, but they were tasty!
Our Best Wings on the Planet entry, 3rd place overall.
We had a good time and will look forward to doing Sam’s Club again. Troy did a great job putting the event together. Besides the fact that there was no running water, there isn’t anything we could complain about. Our pork certainly crushed any hopes we had of moving on to the Chesapeake invitational, but we will lick our wounds and get ready for the next battle. Congrats to the reserve champ, Lo-N-Slo’ BBQ, and to 4:20 Q for the Grand. These teams crushed the rest of the competition by 12 and 17 points respectively. Very impressive. Next up is Smokin on the Bay in our hometown competition. We set the bar high for ourselves last year and are hoping to have a strong showing again in 2012.
After a call in pork and ribs, 3rd place brisket was our third call of the day. I'm sure the cheerleaders were sad that we didn't get called up for one final trophy!
This year in Frederick, Maryland, 69 teams showed up to compete for cash and trophies; making it our biggest competition of the year. We knew that with the quality of the teams competing, anything finishing in the top 15 was a good accomplishment. We had three categories in the top ten, and our chicken bombed for a third time straight since our 1st place finish in Annapolis. Damn you chicken … Damn you!
First things first, usually the end of our post is a congrats to the Grand Champion of an event, but it’s fitting to put that first this week. A very big contgrats for a well deserved victory to Deguello BBQ. Kit puts in countless hours of research and practice to improve his competition BBQ and it was obvious this week just how hard he has worked. A great rebound from what he deemed a “middle of the pack” performance in Delaware just a few weeks ago. Great job Deguello BBQ … we were cheering for you! We would also like to congratulate Tasty Licks BBQ for coming in a close second for the reserve Grand Champion position.
Our cook went as expected. We made very minor adjustments to our chicken, which we now know should have been MAJOR adjustments. Three consecutive finishes where we placed below 20th … we are going to revisit a few things before our next competition. Ribs, pork and brisket all gave us top ten calls with our brisket coming in 3rd making it three competitions in a row where our brisket made top 5. Yeah brisket! Booooo Chicken! We will work on bringing our chicken back up over the next few weeks.
Sal missed his chance for the best Smokin' Gnome mascot yet!
We’ve been taking our mutts with us the past few competitions and they are adjusting rather nicely to living in our trailer from time to time. Our Shih tzu, Cosmo, is alway curious and ended up under the trailer where our cookers are and got some grease drippings on his head. Our remedy was to make an impromptu foil hat for him … which ended up looking suspiciously like a real life yard gnome. This had us worried because Sal from Smokin’ Gnome BBQ was cooking just across the way from us. We decided that before we caught Sal stealing our real life gnome, we’d offer to trade him straight up for his inflatable gnome posted outside of his camp. Unfortunately for all of us, he wouldn’t take the bait so we still have our Shih tzu and Sal still has his gnome … our loss.
Happy Father's Day! Always celebrated with SPAM and eggs!
The Swinetastic BBQ competition happens to fall on fathers day weekend, and the proceeds for the event go to the American Cancer Society … So it’s only fitting in memory of my father, a former consultant for Hormel, that we always stay until Sunday and cook a family tradition of Spam and scrambled eggs for breakfast. You may think you don’t like Spam … or would never try Spam barring some natural disaster … but Spam and eggs is GOOD! Anyone staying Saturday night in 2013 can come over for breakfast Sunday morning!
Although we wanted to burn our chicken recipe, we promise it wasn't us who started the dumpster on fire!
We had fun as always at Swinetastic, but are looking forward to a few weeks off. We may revisit our chicken recipe, but Chris, we promise we didn’t burn our old recipe in your dumpster!!! Our weekends in July will undoubtedly be filled with practice cooks and the freezer will soon be packed with experimental chicken thighs … but that’s what makes ‘time off’ so much fun!
Even the scrap ribs were rather tasty!
With only 29 teams registered for the Showdown, the level of competition was surprisingly high. We did not have the best cook this week and we knew it even before the meat was off the smoker… but we did everything we could to give the judges the best we had available by turn in time. The results were 3rd place ribs and 3rd place brisket which helped carry our low scores from 19th place chicken and 20th place pork to an overall 7th place finish.
We tried to be organized this year and sat down with a calendar before the season started. We planned out each competition knowing we were going to have our busiest season yet. After a strong finish in Delaware a couple weeks ago, Jeremy from Seadog BBQ unintentionally talked us into adding one more and we ended up competing in the Beltway BBQ Showdown in Fort Washington, Maryland. Our original plan was to take the few weeks after Delaware to ensure we were 100% ready for the Swinetastic BBQ Festival in Frederick, MD on June 16th. After Jeremy mentioned there was still room at the Beltway, we changed our mind and decided maybe it was best to just keep in the rhythm of competing.
We pulled in early Friday morning to a very well laid out competitor area. Sites were clearly marked, water was easily accessible and each team had a power drop right in front of their site. Weather was going to be a factor Friday night, so we prepared accordingly … At least as much as you can for a tornado. As the weather warnings went off, all we could do is watch as the clouds began to spin and drop to the ground a mile away from us. Although they claimed there was a tornado in the same county, we never saw a full funnel cloud hit the ground … but it was close enough for us!
PLEASE don't become a tornado … PLEASE! … Or is it already?
Saturdays cook was uneventful. Our chicken ended up a little ahead of schedule and our test bites were on the dry side. we were not too surprised that we were not leading the pack with the yard bird. It’s frustrating to go from 1st in Annapolis to 26th and 20th the competitions after that. We had a discussion about it and may have identified the slightest, inadvertent change in technique that may have been impacting the final product. We are going to make the adjustment for Frederick, but keep the same flavor profile that got us 1st in Annapolis. In Delaware, we had almost nothing worth turning in for ribs. This week we cooked better racks of ribs and had plenty to choose from … I guess we chose the 3rd place ribs instead of the 1st place ones! In the pork category, our pork was a little dry. The butts cooked on schedule and the temps were right … but they still came out a little over done in our opinion. This was reflected in our scoring. On to brisket … guess what … dry. Not overly dry, and the flavor was right on, but a large section of the flat was more dry than normal. I sliced the entire thing until we found some slices with moisture. Although we turned in fewer slices than normal, we still managed to fill the box with good flavored meat and managed to get that 3rd place call.
A huge congrats to 3Eyz BBQ for taking Grand Champion! With so many reserves, we knew their time was coming and it was well earned. We keep telling Dan and Chris that someday there will be a competition that we are going to nudge them out of the top seats, but that seems to be quite a lofty goal. Great job guys!
We have a weekend of fun and relaxation coming up at the “Dizzyfest” at Chris Capell’s BBQ store in Manassas, VA this weekend. Then it’s game time in Frederick. That’s a big one this year and the team list looks like the who’s who of Mid Atlanta Barbecue! Looking forward to a weekend of serious competition!
The picture perfect setting as seen from the Peppermonkey camp.
We decided early in the season that we couldn’t pass up Delaware this year. It’s the only Delaware state tournament so the Grand Champion is automatically invited to the Jack Daniel World Championship Invitational Barbecue … “The Jack!” Having had top ten finishes in both of our competitions this year, we came into Delaware confident, but well aware of the level of competition that would be cooking all around us.
Friday evening started with Chef’s Choice and Dessert turn ins. Our cook went well for both, but apparently the judges weren’t in the mood for what we turned in as the scores showed we landed in the middle of the pack for both categories. No worries, we knew we weren’t there for the dessert, we were there to compete with BBQ.
Our cooking routine has finally reached the point where we are very comfortable the entire morning of turn ins. There is always a little pressure as each box nears completion, but being organized and sticking to the same routine helps out enormously. Our chicken was first place just two weeks ago in Annapolis and when we took a bite, we both agreed, the taste, texture and tenderness were equal to what got us that call. At awards, as the top ten teams were called off, we realized our chicken may have not been the judge’s favorite this time. Not only was it not top ten, it was not even top 25. 26th place chicken is not where we wanted to be, but following the golden rule of BBQ, we will not change anything for our next competition and see if we can get some better scores.
Our crystal and clay pigs watch over the meat on our Cambro.
Ribs were next and if there was a moment of stress on Saturday morning, it was when I pulled the ribs to glaze them and realized we didn’t have too many choices when it came to turn in quality ribs. After the glaze was set we played around with each rack, tasted one or two, and realized we only had one rack that was worthy of presenting to the judges. Earlier this season we made the mistake of adding a couple of ribs to a box to fill it up more and feel it hurt our overall score as they were not as tender as they should have been. We learned from our mistake, stuck with cutting up only one rack and Erin did some box building magic. 5th place was the result and we were relieved that we made the right decision.
Peppermonkey camp set against the Delaware sky.
Our pork and brisket went as planned. There were no surprises with the pork although we weren’t totally happy with some of the meat once we got it pulled. We managed 13th which is about right where we expected to be. After a miserable brisket cook in Annapolis, I knew just by touching it this week that we had something better to work with. The taste confirmed that we had a decent shot at brisket and we ended up with a 5th place call for the beef category.
Delaware was a great site for a competition. Had we thought to bring a gallon or two of bug killer, it would have been absolutely perfect. We were very happy with a 4th place overall out of 52 teams, and technically we tied for 3rd, but our tie breaker score dropped us down to 4th. Gonehoggin.com deserves a big congrats for their GC, good luck at the Jack! Congrats to 3Eyz BBQ for their reserve place. We certainly feel like Middletown will be a “Must attend” competition for us next year. Time to gear up for Frederick, MD in just a few weeks!
What turned out to be 1st place chicken is sauced and resting on the grate.
We warmed up 2012 with the Go Naked competition in April, but the Naptown BarBAYq was our first full KCBS competition of the year, and for the most part, we were happy with how things turned out. We missed the first Naptown BarBAYq in 2011 because we were at the Waldorf, MD Eggfest. This year we were eager for a competition and Annapolis was just too close to home to pass up. Don and his crew did a fantastic job of meeting all the needs of the competition teams. Seeing how this event was run and knowing it was only the second year (and the first year at the new location) we are certain to come back next year.
Friday night we entered two ancillary categories, but we never heard our named called for chef’s choice or for the seafood category. It seems as though beating 3Eyz BBQ at any ancillary category will be the challenge of 2012. We chose a dessert consisting of a peanut butter pie filling served over a brownie and topped with a chocolate dipped bacon coil ….. And for the record, it was very tasty!
The chocolate dipped bacon coil really topped off our peanut butter pie dessert!
We were fortunate to set up camp next to a first time team … I believe the team name was “We Beat Your Meat” (sorry guys if I have that wrong). I say fortunate because we enjoy helping out new teams any way we can. We realize we are far from veteran status, but we always look back to how nice Chris Capell and his Dizzy Pig crew treated us when we set up next to them for our first competition in 2010. After that experience, we vowed to always assist a new team any chance we got and ensure they are treated the way we were when we were rookies. Ryan, the chief cook, led the team to an early call Friday night when they got 2nd overall in the ancillary categories. Well done !!! There were a lot of seasoned cooks at this event and these guys pulled in a nice check before the true competition even started!
After just a couple hours of sleep, the alarm sounded in the wee hours on Saturday morning, reminding us it was competition day. The eggs were soon fired up and closely monitored. Our best cooks have been using no electronic temp controllers or fans … so we decided to start this year out the same way and cook using nothing more than thermometers and vent adjustments. Overall, the cook went really well for the first of the year. We waited to trim the brisket at the competition site and realized it was smaller and more thin than normal and we weren’t able to compensate enough during the cook. Our brisket was early and had to rest longer than prefered which resulted in a poor brisket score. The ribs were a different story; after a history of having them come out slightly over cooked, this time they were slightly under. We had one rack that was just right, and should have boxed only that rack; but we decided to take a few others to fill the box and in hind sight, that may have affected our scores. Pork and chicken landed us top ten calls; 6th in pork, and 1st in chicken! We weren’t 100% confident in our chicken, but that has been a strong category for us and Erin forecasted early on that it would be our best of the day.
All smiles after a 1st place chicken call!
The Annapolis BarBAYq turned out to be a success for us. With two calls and a 6th place overall, we are motivated to head to Delaware and improve on everything we did this weekend. Thanks to Don and his crew for all the hard work they put into the event. This is one that everyone should consider adding to their schedule if it isn’t there already. See you there next year!
