Meat Rushmore BBQ Competition BBQ thread
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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!
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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.
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Midwest_kc that looks great! Hope your luck continues to improve!
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Thank you for your efforts to get this posted
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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.
Midwest_kc
Congrats. Outstanding effort all the way through! -
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.
Midwest_kc congratulations. That is a lot work going on. Everything looks great on your posts.
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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!
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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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!
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.
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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.
Midwest_kc congrats, so what is the monetary rewards for placements? How many places does it pay out to?
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Midwest_kc congrats, so what is the monetary rewards for placements? How many places does it pay out to?
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.
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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.
Midwest_kc I can’t speak for Waltons but maybe give a shout-out to your sponsors here
Perhaps they will up the ante
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he drinks beer for a lifetime -
Midwest_kc I can’t speak for Waltons but maybe give a shout-out to your sponsors here
Perhaps they will up the anteglen I didn’t want to be too spammy/promot-y, so I figured I’d leave that out. I did mention our social media handles in the first post, though, and they’re definitely mentioned there!
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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.
Midwest_kc you ever compete with Heath Riles?
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I have competed against him at the Royal, but I have never had the pleasure of meeting him. I’ve heard he’s a great guy.
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So we were back at it last weekend, with what is referred to as a “Rolling Double.” This is when you cook a contest Fri/Sat, cleanup, and head to another contest for Sat/Sun. All doubles are exhausting, but these are another beast. Normal doubles have one set up, one tear down, and you stay where you are. Rolling doubles are a lot more work, but this wasn’t as bad as some, as they were only 9 miles apart.
Anyways, we went down to St Robert, MO for the Kickin it Route 66 competition and got set up and ready to go.
I recorded some boomerang videos of different things this weekend, thinking that they would be a cool way to show what we’re doing, but the board no likey mp4 files, so that’s a bust. I suppose I’ll get better with these writeups as we go, but I’m trying to think of ways to do so without just repeating the same stuff all the time.
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One thing you can always count on at a BBQ contest is camaraderie. One of the ways this comes through is the “good luck” shots and beers that are had at different, very specific times throughout the morning. We typically participate in a 7:07 good luck beer, and good luck shots at 9:22, 10:30, 10:45, and 11:00. At these, cooks gather around and have a shot or a beer and wish each other good luck on their cooks that day. Are certain cooks trying to get you drunk so they can beat you? Maybe. But I partake anyways, lol.
This week we hosted the 11:00 shot both days. We call it our “family shot” which is a little smaller, and usually only has 5-7 people at it, our closest friends in BBQ. We did a shot of fireball mixed with orange crush, which surprisingly wasn’t too bad.
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Chicken was a little spicy on Saturday. The rub we use is pretty coarse, so we grind it a bit and I think I over grinded it. Black pepper gets a bit spicier the more it’s ground, and it really came through this time. Lesson learned.
Ribs were pretty good. They were a bit spicy too. We later found out, we forgot to put the honey in the sauce, which is what we attributed it to. Tenderness was on, and the flavor wasn’t bad, just didn’t have that sweetness from the honey. I attribute it to still being in preseason form.
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Pork was money. It was really good. Better, imo, than last week when we just barely missed a perfect score. When our pork scores, it can carry a category that falls a bit short. It’s been our best category for a couple years now.
Brisket is a category that used to be probably our best. Definitely neck and neck with pork. For whatever reason it just stopped scoring last summer/fall. No clue what happened. We changed some things over the winter, and didn’t have the results we were looking for last weekend, but this isn’t the kind of thing where one contest can make you rethink everything. Taste is subjective and sometimes you get a group of judges that loves or hates your taste more than what will be the norm. So, we rolled the same thing, got it a bit more tender, injected it a bit more for moisture, and liked what we had.
Here it is when we wrapped it.
Maybe could have gone a little longer to even out the color, but the way the judges see it, it won’t matter. It’s difficult to notice a few things like that once it’s sliced.
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We then immediately started cleaning and loading like mad men. Our goal was to get to the next contest before the other teams doing both contests (it was about 30 of us doing both) so that we could get set up and get back for awards. Brisket turn in is at 1:30 and we had both our cook trailer and camper cleaned up, loaded and hooked up, wheels rolling at 1:47. That beat our previous record, last summer when we went from Lane, KS to Emmetsburg, IA for the worst rolling double ever (6 hour drive between the 2) and were rollling at 1:50.
So we got over there, set up, and a couple people went back for awards while I stayed and injected meats, got chicken in brine, and finished washing dishes. They moved awards up by an hour, normally a good thing, which kept me from going back with the team.
The judges did not agree on our assesments of our cook. Out of 54 teams, we did manage a respectable 15th in pork and 16th in ribs, and finished mid pack (27th) overall. It was pretty disappointing, but the great part about doubles is you don’t have time to dwell on your successes or failures, but you get an immediate chance to make it right.
We went out to dinner that evening, and I made the classic tired man mistake of having 2 margaritas at dinner, and then not having anything else for an hour or so, which made me ready for bed. I went to bed at 8, which is crazy, but it also got me a full 8 hours of sleep which was nice on Sunday morning.
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Literally everything I got Sunday morning was boomerang/video stuff, so we’ll skip right to the turn ins.
Chicken was much better. We left it on the cooker an extra 5 minutes, which made it a touch more tender. We ground it correctly, which toned the spice of the black pepper nicely, just overall a good piece of chicken.
Ribs were money. Man, they were good. Again, made sure we added the honey, which balanced the spice and then we got a perfect bite. It’s bad luck to say anything, but I couldn’t help but think that anything less than top 5 in ribs would be a travesty. In retrospect, I’d probably put the top row on the bottom and bottom on the top, as it would probably look better, but it is what it is.
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