Heading up to Rhodes Grove camp ground for our final competition of the year is always a bitter sweet trip for us. Exciting because we know we will have a good time at the event and really enjoy the camp ground for a full four day weekend. Fun because we get to see all the teams that we’ve been competing against all season long. It is a great opportunity to tell war stories about different cooks and events that everyone experienced during the season. Sad because we know it’s the final competition of the year for us, and finally there is a slight feeling of relief knowing that it’ll be a few months before we have to load and unload our family of big green eggs again.
This year it was safe to say we felt a little bit of pressure because we had a much more successful season than 2010 with a 6th place and a 4th place overall in two competitions against many good competitors. Granted, the pressure was pretty much self imposed, but we were really excited to go out with a bang! Our chicken had consistently been in the top ten, but not the top five. Our brisket came in 1st last week and we wanted to keep it there. Pork and ribs have been in the top 5 this year, but they have not been consistent for us. Our hope was to bring it all together; however, with a 17th place overall, clearly we didn’t meet our goal.
We have done well in chefs choice and other ancillary categories this year. At Smoketoberfest the only rule for chefs choice was that it must contain apples. We opted for Monkey bread wrapped around apple slices. It contained your basic Monkey bread ingredients but instead of balls of plain dough, each ‘ball’ contained a slice of apple in it. If memory serves me correct, we placed 4th with our Monkey bread.
A valuable lesson was learned about the big green eggs; when the gaskets are burned off completely and then the eggs are set out in 50 mph winds, temperature control can be a bit more difficult than normal. Failing to recognize the wind would be a problem until it was too late set me behind on the chicken cook and our scores in tenderness reflected that. Our brisket was a little too salty for our taste and the judges seem to agree. Ribs came out decent, we added just a little more rub to them to kick the spice level up which seemed to improve our scores over last weekend. Pork. What the hell happened to the pork? Nothing in our mind, but we sure did tank in this category! The only thing I can guess is that because I seem to have been heavy handed with the rub on everything else I did the same to the pork and the box pieces may have been saltier than our samples.
The wind messed with us a little bit, but that certainly can’t be an excuse because 46 other teams were cooking in the same wind. This weekends results reminded us that at this level of competition, if you don’t show up ready with your ‘A’ game, then you aren’t going to land in the top ten. Congrats to the D.C. Firefighters for earning the grand champion. That’s twice this year we ended up cooking next to the GC. Hopefully in 2012 we will earn that top honor! Thanks to all our friends for making 2011 our most enjoyable BBQ season yet. Looking forward to 2012 already.
