Meat Rushmore BBQ Competition BBQ thread
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A couple of pics of the general grounds of the area would be interesting
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So, I’ve been dark on here for a few weeks, partly because we have only had one contest since my last post, and partly because I’m trying to figure out a way to not be as repetitive in my posts. For better or worse, there is a lot of sameness in competitions. I have one this weekend, and I’m going to try and get more “social” pictures, but what would you guys like to see in this thread? I want to make sure that it stays fresh, and relevant to the people who are following the thread, and not get stale.
Midwest_kc
I’m with glen . Just keep doing what you’re doing. -
OK, so work has been crazy the last month or so, and shows no signs of slowing down until the end of July at least. Good problem to have, but not great for keeping this updated. Due to the craziness, we took a month off from competing, which was kind of a nice break, but now we’re going to be going hot and heavy for the rest of the year (well, until October when the season ends).
Our last competition was in Bixby, OK where the Rotary club there puts on a Blues and BBQ event. This is a big event for the town, and you can tell they really support it. Walking to turn in was interesting - you had to about double what you thought your walk was so you could dodge the crowds! It actually made us almost miss sausage turn in.
One of the great things about competition BBQ, as I’ve mentioned is the camaraderie, and the family atmosphere. One tradition is the 9:22 shot. At 9:22, someone hosts a good luck shot, and everyone gathers to wish each other the best.
Why 9:22? Well, you may have something to do 9:15, or something to do at 9:30 for your cook. But, everyone is available at 9:22 (or so the reasoning goes). Some contests then also have a 7:00 Good luck beer, 10:00, 10:30. and 11:00 shot as well. Basically if you’re trying to disguise your mild alcholism as a hobby - this is your thing!
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This competition had a sausage turn in, which we always enjoy doing. My wife wanted to try something she was thinking about turning in at the American Royal, so we ran with that.
It managed 7th place out of the 50-some teams at the contest.
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On Friday night, as we were chatting with some other teams, Oklahoma’s love of BBQ bologna came up. I thought, shoot, this wouldn’t work anywhere else, but I wonder how that would do in a competition in OK? Worst case, I get to take home a bunch of bologna, which I love anyways. Problem was, there was zero chance that my wife was going to let us change course. One of the other teams wasn’t doing sausage, so we gave him money to go register, while we ran off to the store to cook BBQ Bologna to turn as him. I’m not going to lie. It was fantastic. It was a risk. It was a hero or zero move…
and it was a zero. Didn’t work. I don’t remember the placing, but it was somewhere in the 20s.
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Chicken is our nemesis. I don’t like trimming it, don’t care to cook it, I do like eating it, but everything about making it annoys me. Our scores show it, too. We thought this one was ok, and we got an ok score. Finished 29th. If we ever figure out chicken…watch out, man.
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As always ribs is up next. This has been our best category this year, but we pushed them a little too far this time. Over beats under in comp BBQ world, for a number of reasons, but we knew they needed to tighten up in the box. They must have. They took 14th, but with a score of 173 out of 180, they definitely weren’t bad.
I know Jonathon was talking on a livestream about whether comp ribs are sauced. My real name is linked to my youtube account, so that’s what shows, but I chimed in about our accomplishments. This is what those comp ribs are about.
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Pork has been our best category for the last 3 years, and last year we finished 8th in the world out of a little over 2000 teams in the KCBS Team of the Year chase. Average score wise, it still is this year, we just can’t seem to get any top results, We’ll get a 176 and still find a way to be 8th or something. This pork was on point taste wise, but we the tenderness was a bit off (again, a touch over), and the appearance was sloppy. So what happened? We got all 9s (the highest score judges give) on appearance and tenderness, and all 8s on flavor…I don’t get this sport some times.
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Brisket was dead on. I really thought that it was going to be top 5 for sure, if not 1st. Loved everything about it. Sometimes, it’s just not your day, though. FInished 11th, just outside the money (top 10) on this one.
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After that, it was time to clean up, have a beer, and wait on awards to start. Not getting any calls in the top 10 in the main meats, we were expecting the worst. but, we ended up a respectable 15th in a really tough field, so we’ll take it.
This weekend we’re back in OK, where they haven’t really liked our food the last 3 or 4 times we’ve been down there so I’m not sure why we go back to that state, lol. Wagoner, OK we’ll see you tomorrow!
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After that, it was time to clean up, have a beer, and wait on awards to start. Not getting any calls in the top 10 in the main meats, we were expecting the worst. but, we ended up a respectable 15th in a really tough field, so we’ll take it.
This weekend we’re back in OK, where they haven’t really liked our food the last 3 or 4 times we’ve been down there so I’m not sure why we go back to that state, lol. Wagoner, OK we’ll see you tomorrow!
Midwest_kc - It all looks wonderful
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Midwest_kc That’s amazing man, great job! I think I have asked you about this in the past but are you planning on coming to our SCA event this summer?
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Jonathon I really want to, but we already have a BBQ contest booked that weekend.
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OK, so this weekend we went to Wagoner, OK. As I mentioned last time, OK hasn’t been too kind to us recently, and it’s always stupid hot this time of year, but…we’re just gluttons for punishment, I suppose.
The temps throughout the day both days were high, but the humidity was staggering. We have a clock that we set up on the porch of our trailer, that includes weather. Now, our smokers are up there, etc, so it’s always hotter there than on the ground, but on that clock it was reading 103* and 39% humidity at one point Saturday. I drink a lot of water, and the heat usually doesn’t bother me too much, but by about noon on Saturday, I was feeling it and really dragging. Also, noon is when turn ins start - not the best time to be feeling bad. Luckily, turn in time means I can be inside where there is AC.
Friday night there was an SCA contest. I have struggled in every one of those I’ve done, but the more I do, the higher my scores get, I just need to get in a rhythm with them I think, and honestly I don’t do enough to do that. Combine that with I never cook my steaks at home to the doneness required in SCA, and, well, it’s nice to have something to do on a Friday at a BBQ contest.
This was probably the best tasting steak I’ve cooked in a contest. The appearance…not so much. I left my pins at home that I use to hold the steak together after trimming some of the fat out from between the eye and the spinalis, so I tried not trimming it out, and as the fat rendered it kinda fell apart. I don’t have a pic, because as my wife was getting her phone out to take one, I told her I didn’t want to remember a steak that looked that bad, although I used some more colorful language than that. I do have a pic of the set up though, with my Chiefs red PK named Patrick, ready to rock.
All and all, the steak finished 14th, and while we didn’t get a good appearance score, it certainly didn’t get hit the way it should have.
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Saturday morning when we got to our spot from the hotel, it was already 80 degrees, but being that it was 4:30 in the morning it felt comfortable with a slight breeze and no sunshine. so we got off and running with the big meats, which go on at 5:15.
Chicken continues to be our nemesis, but I thought the chicken we turned in this week was really, really good. I have a hard time writing much about it because, well, there isn’t much to tell. I’m going to try and get some prep pictures of it this weekend, so hopefully I’ll be able to do better next week. It finished 14th, but I really believe it deserved better.
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Ribs continue to be a strong category for us, I really think the flavor on our drum smokers adds a flavor that hits the judges happy spot. Ribs, pork, and brisket all get fat dripping onto the fires that combust and give the meat a flavor that is pretty much impossible to recreate on another smoker.
Here they are about a half hour in, just waiting for them to color up before we wrap. This usually takes about 2 hours total.
After we wrap with butter, sauce, sugar, etc we put them back on for another 45 minutes to and hour until they reach tenderness. Then they rest untnil time to sauce, slice, box and give to the judges. We had one rack this time that was just way better than the others. All 4 were turn in worthy, but this one…something just jumped out about them. There was a bit of an issue with some fat on top of them, which made me not love the appearance, but we went with just the 6 bones across the box this time to only allow the judges to eat the best we had to offer.
These ended up 4th place.
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Pork is pork. Pork has been so good to us for so long, until we get to boxing, it’s almost robotic. Same thing at the same time every time. After they’ve been wrapped for an hour, I check them, and I can usually tell you within 5 minutes of when they’ll be done. While I like the success that it brings, it’s made it less fun to cook, as it really has become a recipe, not a journey like some of the other meats. A recipe that you have to have the experience and the feel for from doing it the same way for so long, but a recipe nonetheless.
Here they are coloring up. We flip our butts halfway through the before wrapping stage to even out the color, and this is from right before I did that. You can see the money muscles that I trimmed out beforehand, and the one side is kinda pale. Once I flip it over, it will catch up and even out the color nicely.
This was an interesting turn in, that definitely made things “fun” (that’s code for stressful). 3 of the 4 money muscles, which we slice, were tough. Again, we’re talking fine lines here and the difference between tough and mushy is miniscule. However, I wasn’t comfortable turning them in. The other was close to mushy, but I knew if I sliced them thicker, they would work. The problem is getting 6 slices (one per judge) that are thick out of one muscle. Luckily, it all worked out and we were able to do so. We ended up winning pork, successfully defending our 1st place pork from last year at this contest.
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Brisket was interesting. We go back and forth on whether to turn in burnt ends or not. Part of the issue is that there is not a standard to aim for with burnt ends. With slices, there are tests that judges use to judge tenderness and if you hit your marks on cooking it correctly, but burnt ends are the wild west. Some people like them a little fattier, some more rendered, and each judge seems to grade burnt ends differently sometimes. We actually went about 2 years without turning them in, and recently have started doing it again and have seen success with it.
I didn’t think they were going to go in this week. The point was a little thin, and they seemed to not be cooking the way we wanted them to. We cubed them up though, and they were good, so we put them in. It was a good decision as we also finished in 1st in brisket, giving us 2 1sts and 3 top 5s in the contest.
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We knew that we would finish high in the overall rankings, based on the 3 high calls. We didn’t know where our chicken landed though, and there was a team with 4 top 10s, as well as one with a 1st, 2nd, and 4th, so we weren’t sure where we would land, but figured top 5 for sure, and probably top 3. I figured 2nd or 3rd.
As they were reading off the top 10, they called our friend Bill our of Texas for 3rd (he had the 1,2,4), and I was prepared to get up to walk up for Reserve Grand Champion. However, they called the 4 call team…and then called us for overall Grand Champions.
A little bit of a Walton’s tie in here. Kelly, who won RGC (in the pic below in the cowboy hat) has a reputation for his sausage making. When I decided to get into it, the first thing I did was sign up for one of his sausage classes, and then started scouring the web and youtube. That’s when I came across Walton’s. I loved the YouTube videos, I had browsed the website, and I liked what I saw, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger on anything. During his class, he mentioned Walton’s as being a great resource for buying supplies, and how he orders from there frequently. That sealed it in my mind, which led me to this community, which led you to reading my ramblings. So, without this guy, I may not be here right now.
State Center, IA this weekend! Ready to get up there and do some cooking!
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