Meat Rushmore BBQ Competition BBQ thread

[PapaSop]

Midwest_kc
Funny you mention chimneys. Just thinking about that. Ever put a grate on top your chimney and cook it that way? I tried this a couple years back with a 1/2" 8oz ribeye. One minute on each side. Came out perfectly pink inside. Wish I had a pic. Maybe I’ll do it tonight. Have one thawing.

[Tex_77]

Midwest_kc I saw that you like Royal Oak charcoal, have you tried B&B charcoal? If so what were your thoughts on it?

[Midwest_kc]

Tex_77 I have tried it. It’s good stuff. Those char logs are crazy how hot they get. I thought I was going to melt my grill one time!

I don’t really have any complaints about B&B, but to me Royal Oak burns the best, and it’s available pretty much everywhere, which is nice when your traveling around the region and may need some in a pinch.

[Midwest_kc]

PapaSop I have never tried that, but I know people who have. There’s a group of guys on the steak circuit who do it that way in contests. They call themselves the chimney cartel.

[Tex_77]

Midwest_kc I have char logs on my list of stuff to try. I agree B&B can be hard to find.

[Midwest_kc]

Well, this weekend brought the beginning of the competition BBQ season for us. We were in Olathe, KS for the Qlathe BBQ Championships, and competing against some of the best teams in the region, 70 in total. It was a chance to kick the rest of the rust off, and try and start to find our groove for the year to come. It is always a great time to get out and see the BBQ family for the first time in a few months, and begin to thaw out from the winter.

We got set up, and all of our meat prepped, and enjoyed the evening hanging out with old friends and making some new ones. Sharing drinks, a fire pit, and laughs. Bed time comes early for me at these events these days, as we make sure we’re able to focus and turn in our best products the next day.

Early Saturday morning (4:30 to be exact), we got up and got to work. We season the brisket the night before, but wait until morning to season pork butts. and then we fire up the pits. There seems to be an issue with my picture of the big meats before they go on, so I’ll see if I can make that work in another post.

This is shortly after we got the pits lit, looking down our aisle. This time of day you can really see the park starting to come to life, pits getting lit, and people moving around, though still staying to themselves.

[Midwest_kc]

At this point, I neglected to take pictures of much. as I was too busy trying to remember what I was doing and not focused on the picture taking. I’ll do better as we go along.

So that said, we’ll skip ahead to our turn ins. First up, at noon, is chicken. We cook thighs for competitions, and as with every turn in, the goal is a great presentation, and perfectly tender, flavorful meat. This involves, rubs, sauces, an amount of butter to give anyone heart issues, and a few other tricks we’ve learned along the way.

There are a few rules around your turn in box and presentation. Garnish, if used, is limited to just a few select greens. The most popular are parsley and kale, but we use kale. You can not have any other objects in the box, or it will be disqualified. You also cannot shape your turn ins in any way that would alert a judge that a turn in was yours. This protects the double blind system that KCBS employs. You also must turn in enough meat for 6 judges to have a sample, and they must be separate, identifiable pieces. Judges are not allowed to cut, tear, etc samples apart for everyone to get a piece. This is an attention to detail piece when turning in ribs, etc, as if you don’t get one sliced all the way through, and you only turned in 6, one judge will not be able to give you a score.

Our chicken turned out good. It was maybe a touch under (not unsafe under, but to get the fat rendered properly, and the skin to have the right texture we cook the chicken to a pretty high temp. So it was safe to eat, just still a little chewy. Flavor we thought was spot on, and it looked great.

[Midwest_kc]

Then we moved on to ribs. Rib turn in is at 12:30. These were really good. We adjusted our recipe a little bit from last year, as towards the end of the year they just stopped scoring for some reason. Mixed in a new rub, removed 2 to do something a little simpler, and I thought we were rewarded for that move.

[Midwest_kc]

Then it was on to pork. Pork has been our best category for the last couple years, followed by brisket. We turn in slices from the “money muscle” as well as some pulled. There are specific parts of the butt that we take our pulled from, as it’s always the most tender, juiciest part. It also is from the interior of the butt, which doesn’t get any rub, so we have some techniques to get flavor on it such as injections, etc.

I was disappointed in our pulled. What we had and turned in was good, but only one of the butts was able to give us what we were after meaning we were short a bit on it. Enough for 6, just not what I like to turn in so we have a full box. Luckily I had to money muscles that were spot on, so we adjusted our normal presentation a bit to make it look a bit fuller. I kinda like this box, and you may see more of it depending on how I’m feeling that day. I’m sure there will still be plenty of my standard presentation you’ll see, though.

[Midwest_kc]

Then brisket at 1:30. This has traditionally been a good category for us, 2nd best overall. However, it has fallen off a little bit at the end of last year, so we tried something new on it as well. flavor and tenderness was good, but it was a touch dry. I’m pretty sure I have an idea of how to fix it, so we’ll see this weekend if we did.

[Midwest_kc]

After cleaning up and loading up, we headed down to the awards ceremony, to await our fate. We ended up taking 2nd in both ribs and pork, each one within a point of a perfect score. We were hit pretty good on chicken and brisket though, and landed 19th out of 70 teams overall. When you’re competing in a field like this, the margins for error are tiny. We were only a couple scores outside of the top 10, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Up next we have a double this weekend, and it’s what we call a “rolling double” which means we’ll cook Saturday, clean up, and head to another contest to cook Sunday. It’s a ton of work, but we get a chance to take one day of PTO on friday and cook 2 contests, so we like to do them when we can.

Thanks for reading!

[Midwest_kc]

Sorry for so many individual posts. Apparently when I had it all together in one post, it was too big, and it was giving me troubles trying to post. So, I broke it up.

[Tex_77]

Midwest_kc that looks great! Hope your luck continues to improve!

[glen]

Thank you for your efforts to get this posted

[PapaSop]

Midwest_kc
Congrats. Outstanding effort all the way through!

[YooperDog]

Midwest_kc congratulations. That is a lot work going on. Everything looks great on your posts.

[Jonathon]

Midwest_kc Don’t apologize, it actually makes it a little easier to read when they are split up like that. We did a SCAA a few years ago and would have done one in 20 if covid didn’t shut everything down. When we do another you’re welcome to compete!

[Midwest_kc]

Jonathon I will try to make it, for sure. There was supposed to be a BBQ comp in Wichita somewhere last year that canceled. I am hoping it happens this year so I can swing by and check out the store. I haven’t seen it on the KCBS site yet though.

[twilliams]

Midwest_kc congrats, so what is the monetary rewards for placements? How many places does it pay out to?

[Midwest_kc]

twilliams Like old folks using the restroom - it all depends.

This contest pays pretty well. The 2nd place finishes each scored $400, so we took home $800 for the day. Not all contests pay that well. Many benefit non profits, etc, and so the majority of the funds goes to those causes. This was put on by the Parks and Rec dept for the city. We have taken some big prizes at some of those others though, and walked away with the same or less money than we won this weekend.

This is not a hobby that is profitable. The very, very, best can scrape together a small profit over the course of the year. They usually have big money sponsors that help cover a lot of their costs, though. We are fortunate to have a few, and they help tremendously, but a contest still costs us about $600 before gas, hotel if we need it, meals, etc. We do a decent amount of traveling so we rack up some gas bills pulling our trailer. We finished 24th in the world last year overall, 8th in pork and 20th in ribs and brisket, and still lost quite a bit of money. We do it because we love the people, we love the competition (old fat guys that don’t run much anymore are pretty limited in the things we can get that competitiveness out of our system- that’s why so many of us are angry, lol).

Most contests pay the top 10 in categories, and top 2 overall. That can vary by contest, however. Prize pools are anywhere from $3000 to over $100,000 for big contests like the American Royal. We like ones in the 10,000 range, which is pretty healthy for contests that aren’t the majors, though $20k is possible. I think this one was $15k.