Well, it seemed like there was some interest in following along with us this year, so I’m going to start this post and add to it as we go through the season.

To start, a little background on the team. There’s 5 of us - myself, my wife, and 3 other guys - who all were athletes at various levels when we were younger. As we got older and fatter, playing soccer, basketball and football were becoming less of a possibility at a competitive level, and were looking for an outlet for that competitive spirit.

So, in 2012, we signed up to compete in the American Royal World Series of BBQ. This is the largest BBQ competition in the world, drawing teams from Europe, Asia, and all over North America to compete here in KC for a world championship. We didn’t think we’d do anything like win that our first time out, and we were excited to have a weekend with the boys (plus my wife) and hang out and have some beers while making food.

Well, we didn’t win. We didn’t come close. But we did beat 20% of the field and had an absolute blast doing it. We decided to keep going forward and do a few more of these the next year.

Fast forward to today, and we have evolved. We realized there’s a lot cheaper ways to drink beer with your friends, and that if we wanted to keep doing these things we needed to get serious about it, or quit. We chose to get serious. We have been that way for about 3 years now, and we finished last year ranked 24th overall in the world, and 8th in pork, and in the top 20 in brisket and ribs, and top 50 in chicken #frickenchicken

So I’ll be chronicling our adventures this year, which already is promising to be interesting. I did a steak contest last weekend, and we have our first BBQ comp this weekend, and a double the weekend after. After that the next 5 we were scheduled to do have either moved their date, or postponed still due to the pandemic (no comment). I wonder if some of them are looking for a reason to not do it, but I also know that a lot of these are put on by either non-profits or city parks departments, etc, and none of them can really afford the bad press that comes with holding a food contest during a pandemic and then people potentially getting sick. Plus, many rely on the public turnout to turn a profit, so I get it.

In the next post, I will recap the steak contest I cooked last weekend, including some pics. Thank you to everyone who reads a follows along, and if you want to hit us up on the socials we are @meatrushmorebbq on everything, but mainly Facebook and Instagram.

Last weekend the American Royal put on their first ever Backyard BBQ competition, and steak cookoff. Backyard competitions are typically 2 meat affairs (chicken and ribs), and are a great way for people to get their feet wet in competition bbq without feeling like they are going up against the “big boys.” We do not qualify for a backyard contest, as we’ve done too many of the “master series” or “pro” competitions, and won too much. However, the steak contest was open to all, so I paid the entry fee and went down to Hale Arena in KC to cook some steak, and try and win some cash.

Cooked the steaks on my PK Grills TX, with Grill Grates over Royal Oak briquettes (we always use RO charcoal, it’s my favorite charcoal - and I’ve tried a lot of them). Steak contests are nice, because the meat is provided, it’s a short, one day cook, and who doesn’t want to eat some steak? Usually, the steak you’re given is a ribeye, and you draw for what order you pick your steaks in. It then works as a snake draft, so if you get the first pick, you get the last pick for your second steak. Right in the middle is generally where you want to be. You can get a pretty good steak the first time, and they’re not all picked over the second.

I got the final pick in the first round, which means I got back to back picks. Instead of ribeyes, these were strip steaks. I’m not going lie - I don’t really eat strip steaks. I rarely go out for steaks, and if I’m cooking one at home, I’m not going to let the $3 or whatever a ribeye might cost more than a strip deter me from buying what I really want. It had been years since I cooked a strip. I wasn’t super confident in what I was going to do, but I put a plan together.

I got some of the exterior fat trimmed off, and got it into a shape I thought would cook more evenly. I then whipped up a marinade with Beef Consume, some spices, and a tenderizer and let that set for a bit. I then rubbed it, and got the fire going.

Cooked the first, practice steak, and overshot the doneness just a tad after carryover, so I backed it down a couple degrees in order to keep it more moist and tender.

Then it was boxing time. This is where my wife is Queen. She sees things that I just never pick up on and is able to make those adjustments to make sure that we are presenting the best looking entry we can.

AND…off to turn ins

Then we got to relax and wait for awards. Ended up taking home 3rd place, which I was happy with. I didn’t feel as comfortable with the strip as I would have been a ribeye, and I don’t think I nailed tenderness. The judges mostly agreed giving me good, but not great scores in tenderness though they all really liked the taste and appearance.

Next up is BBQ in Olathe KS this weekend!

Emptied my shopping cart during the livestream yesterday. So awesome that it came today with the free shipping!

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!

Wish I could double like the blue hats…congrats to all, and thank you for making this such a welcoming place. In January I had decided I wanted to learn sausage making so that I had something to do with my trimmings. I found this site through some of the YouTube videos, and I started reading, trying to make sense of it all. You have all helped me learn so much. Now, my wife would like it if you didn’t convince me to spend so much money, but - I also know she secretly likes it when she gets to eat!

OK…now that I’ve had a chance to get the trailer cleaned out and put in storage, and time to reflect on the year, it’s time to recap our trip to the KCBS World Championship Invitational. This is the end of the year championships, and includes an open competition, a few ancillary categories, and then the final world championships for both the backyard and master’s series. There were a total of 145 teams there, about 130 of which had qualified to be there (there were 15 or so that just cooked the open).

The open came and went, we finished 19th in pork, but for whatever reason the other meats just didn’t hit. In addition to having to turn in great food, you also have to get lucky in fields this size. The table of judges you hit really has a huge impact on where you finish, and I think it’s safe to say that the top 50 on the day probably turned in food good enough to win. Some just got a little luckier than the others. I have always lived by the saying that “Luck = execution + opportunity”, but sometimes you don’t get the opportunity. Or maybe the execution was a little off. I don’t think it was, and I have done enough of these to know when it is (our pork in the invitational is a good example), but sometimes the judges see differently. We’ll take our finish in the 40s and move on.

The next day was the backyard invitational and the ancillaries. We do not participate in the backyard series, so all we had to do were the ancillaries, which is good, because I may have had a few too many “pops” the night before. With no turn ins until 2:00, there was plenty of time to recuperate.

The first turn in was Pork Chop. The presentation rules on this is open, so we put together this dish with mashed sweet potatoes topped with candied bacon and a sprig of rosemary, and grilled off the pork chops. We were super happy with this turn in, and thought we had a real good shot at winning. It was delicious.

As you can see, we put the one in the center back facing the side without the grill marks, which is frustrating to miss, but I’m still ready to dive into this dish, lol.

2nd up was turkey. We had initially set out to do turkey noodle soup with my sister in laws homemade noodles that are insane. However, with the entry having to be in the box, fitting 6 bowls of soup was a conundrum that we couldn’t quite figure out. So on to plan b, our Bacon Turkey sliders, which have done well for us in the past. Sliced smoked turkey, muenster cheese, bacon, arugula with a garlic aioli and a maple BBQ sauce we made up using a bourbon barrel aged syrup. They turned out well, but probably needed a little more sauce. Thought they had a shot at a good finish, but didn’t feel as strongly as we did about the pork chop.

The final ancillary was 360 cocktail. 360 Vodka sponsored this turn in, and provided each team a bottle of whatever vodka flavor they wanted, and to do as we wish. Presentation rules were that we had to use their cups, and then turn them in on a platter. Other than that, anything goes. My wife put together a fantastic s’mores martini that, in my biased opinion, should have got a perfect score. A couple judge friends of ours stopped by after they were done and we gave them one, and they agreed. Said it was much better than any of the drinks that came across their tables (and they would have told us if there were better - I expected them to say that even there weren’t, lol).

That night we went to the awards banquet where they awarded the Team of the Year prizes, as well as the awards for backyard and ancillaries. We knew we finished 14th in the world in Ribs for the year (awards go to the top 15, so just nicked in there), so the ancillaries were the only drama, but it’s always fun to help celebrate all our friends who also had great seasons.

For ancillaries, the Pork Chop awards were first, and we ended up 2nd place! When you start to get a little creative with some of these ancillaries it’s always disappointing when you put a ton of effort into one dish and then it doesn’t pay off, so we were super happy that it did this time. Trust me, making mashed sweet potatoes on a smoker is quite a bit of effort, lol.

Turkey was up next, and we didn’t hear our name called. We did, however, win our table, meaning that of the 6 entries that those judges had, ours was their favorite. This is where that luck comes in I was talking about. There were about 80 teams that turned in turkey. So there was probably 13 tables. Our first on a table was still 36th. Again, I think it could have used some more sauce, so maybe it was too dry to get a top 10, but top 20-25 should have happened there if things were even.

Cocktail was last to announce awards, and we finished 10th. I actually was more disappointed in this than the turkey just due to the damage that was done to my liver testing all the different test drinks.

So we walked away with 2 trophies Saturday night, the Ribs Team of the Year, and the Pork Chop 2nd place.

The next day was the Master’s Series invitational, and everything went pretty smooth. Pork was a little off tenderness wise, but we got pieces in there we thought were good. At the end of the day, we heard our name for 2nd in brisket, which was a huge way to end the year. Brisket was a little up and down for us this year, so finishing strong in that category was a great way to end the year. Finished in the 30s, which again, isn’t anything to be upset about in that field.

Now it’s on to the offseason. We always take orders for food for Christmas time, and we have a wedding to cater on New Year’s Eve. Then we’ll get a couple months without much going on BBQ wise - so maybe I can knock some of that Honey-do list out down, and make some sausage (I probably have 40 pork butts that I won’t cook for a contest sitting in the freezer, so I have stuff to use, lol.

Then we’ll get back on the grind and try to take 2022 by storm! Thanks for following along, everyone that stuck with it this year. I’ll try and keep this going next year too, as I really enjoy writing these things - finding the time is the hard part, lol.

Quick update and question - I won the Election! Then, at our first meeting, I was elected secretary so I will be taking an officer position with the organization as well.

Is there interest in continuing this thread for the 2022 season? Lots of moving parts, so I’m not sure how many we’re going to get in, but I’d love to have you all come along with us!

This didn’t suck

As someone new to this hobby, and new to Walton’s, I do hope that you keep your YouTube presence up, simply because that’s how I found you, and the quality of the videos and the information led me here, and, ultimately, to spending the first $300 of what I assume will be many hundreds of dollars with your store. Now that I’ve found you, that won’t change without YouTube, but I am sure there are many like me who have not found you who would be good customers out there lurking in YT land, maybe not even realizing they want to process meat yet.

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!

twilliams said in Walton's Smokehouse Cleaner:

lkrfletcher as this has been discussed before I am probably gonna start an all out war as Jonathon has said before. I am no meat or smoker expert, however I disagree that having a thick creosote film on the walls provides better flavor in the meat being smoked. I have done research on several sites and as I found was nothing more than opinions of the debate of about 50/50% and had no clear scientific proof that the creosote was beneficial in flavor. The smoke that is generated is coming from the smoke pan filled with wood dust on a coil burner or pellets being dropped onto a heat source. Which fills the cabinet with smoke and that smoke adheres to the entire contents of the cabinet including meat at a particular stage of smoking and temperatures. The smoke does not come from the creosote on the interior surface.

Here is the instruction manual for my particular smoker which is one step up bigger unit than the PK100 made by the same company. Take it for what it is, and you choose on how to proceed and maintain. Now I will say this, I do not clean the interior walls, ceiling, door and floor after every use. I only clean the drip pans and stainless steel rack every use as well as mineral oil the gasket. The manufacturer also said that they put the sticker and instructions in booklet to clean after every use for legality reasons as creosote build up is flammable.

Late to the game here, but I am 100% on board with this. Sure, there’s the safety aspect (grease fires, etc), but a clean smoker is a happy smoker, imo. For competitions, we take our cookers down to bare steel before every contest. It cooks more consistently, has cleaner smoke, and makes a product that I can more consistently produce over and over again.

First, while the Cresote isn’t making smoke, it will soften up and can fall on your food, in your fire basked/pan, etc. Even if you don’t realize it, there’s a reason that things color up quicker/get darker in that scenario vs a clean smoker. Personally, I don’t like the way the flavor changes, either, but that’s obviously personal preference.

Second, let’s say that the creosote build up does improve the flavor in some way for you. The amount of it on the smoker is always changing. It’s either being added to, or taken away through cleaning. That means your flavor is always changing. If your cooker is always clean, then you can make the adjustments to get it the way you want and be able to recreate that every time.

Just my $0.02

Ended the regular season, not exactly how we wanted, but mission accomplished anyways.

Don’t soak. If you soak, you’ll just have steam before smoke. Now, smoke does adhere better in a moist environment, so use a water pan to create moisture, and leave the wood dry.

There’s not a membrane on the top of the ribs. Plenty of smoke and seasoning can be on ribs even with a membrane on.

I’m a banker during the day. I manage a branch, and generally enjoy it. I’m not any good at playing politics, so that has hurt me in the past, but I do enjoy what I do, especially my interactions with small business owners and helping them achieve their dreams.

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.

The Wolfpack (because we’re the best i-friends that anyone could have)

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.

It’s always a good day when the UPS man brings a Walton’s box!

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.