Boss Hog Cook Off 2010

This weekend I attended the Boss Hog Cook Off in Waynesboro, GA, the bird dog capital of the US. It is one of the best competitions I've been to. It is well organized and the volunteers make sure you are taken well care of. One of the things we noticed was it seemed like the community was really involved. Local business sponsored different parts, they had a hospitality room for volunteers and contestants and kept it stocked with water and snacks. The ladies who organized it divan awesome job.

We got off off to a later start then planned. We needed to be onsite by 3:30 Friday afternoon and left at noon. The GPS said it was a 3 hour 45 minute drive, we would be cutting it close. We arrived at 3:30 just making the cutoff time.

One of the thing this contest does is a wing contest for Friday evening. It is free to enter if you are already cooking, so we entered. They dropped off our brick of wings, they were still frozen solid, and we started the thawing process. Thankfully they pushed wing turn in time bit so we could defrost them and get them fully cooked. We turned in the prescribed number to the judges and the rest were served to the public.

We did awful in the wing category. We thought they looked and tasted great. The judges were local celebrities so we think some of them were confused on the judging scale or just didn't like spicy wings. At least we had a good snack.

We prepped our other for meats for the competition and got them cooking. This time we changed our rib and brisket recipes to others that we liked much better then the previous contest. The brisket used my home made rub and a mop recipe that I found online. The results were much better. Our brisket took fourteenth place and the ribs seventh. Our chicken, which we thought was our weakest meat, came in eleventh and our pork, which we thought was our strongest, came in twenty-somethingth

Overall we came in sixteenth which was an improvement over last time. Now we have some minor tweaks to do to improve our scores but we think we have the basic formula right.

Thoughts:
Plan to leave earlier than needed
Cook your meat how you like it
Be organized - it makes the contest much more relaxed
Have fun with the anything but categories but focus on the four main ones

BBQ Judging, it's tough but somebody has to do it.

This weekend I judged my first BBQ contest. It was interesting. We arrived early and waited fir the judges meeting to start at 10 am but it didn't start until. About 10:20. When it started it went fairly quick. They introduced the coordinator, the person who set up the contest and finally the mayor of Anderson, where the contest was held. After all the introductions were done the coordinator went over the rules. By this time it was 10:50 and we were to start judging at 11 because there was a sue contest too. They quickly finished up and had us go to the judging room.

I was assigned to judge the backyard category. Not bad on its own but I only got to judge chicken and ribs. Only one piece of the chicken was really good. One was rubbery and salty the others tasted like the cooks used lighter fluid and didn't let it burn off all the way. The ribs were a bit better. Three tasted really good but one of them was very tough, it could have cooked a bit longer.

It was fun and I look forward to doing it again but look forward to judging the professional teams and tasting all four of the meats.

Thoughts:
Show up on time
Take your time and taste the food
Use the water and crackers to cleanse your palate
Talk to the other judges
Have fun


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Q Season Opener

The weekend of April 17 was Catchafire for Q’s first competition this season. This was one of the smoothest competitions we have ever done. Everything went really well. We had trimmed the meat ahead of time so we didn’t have to worry about that onsite and had the trail organized and a schedule set to follow.

When we got to Kings Mountain and checked in there was a little bit of confusion about our name. The fireman who we met shouted it back to the person in charge of checking us in and that person heard “Kitchen Fire!” As he was a fireman, he appeared at the door pretty quick to see what was going on.

We got checked in and set up. The first surprise was that the “Anything but” was an onsite judging. We were not prepared for that. We got our plan together and Ken (our fearless leader) ran to the store for some supplies while I finished setting up. When Ken returned he got the Anything buts prepared while I went to the the cooks meeting.

I grabbed my water and headed to join my fellow competitors. I got to the meeting and sat down. As we were getting ready to start I took a BIG swig of my water only to hold it in my mouth as I read the label on the bottle; Vinegar. Boy was I surprised! No were to spit it out I had to swallow it. Vinegar is not as refreshing as it sounds.

The rest of the competition went smoothly. Overall we didn’t do well but we had our best appearance scores of any of our competitions. Now that we have the look down we will need to get our flavor profiles and tenderness nailed.

A few things we learned:

• Pre-preparation is good - REAL GOOD
• Taking only what you need saves on time and space
• Bring sleeping bags
• Don’t drink vinegar
• It is nice to be able to relax at a competition

Q Chili

This is a recipe I came up with after smoking some pork one weekend and we needed to eat up the left overs so they wouldn’t go bad. It was a hit with the family. I also do competition BBQ some weekends and sometimes we enter the “anything but” category. We needed a dish for one competition so I made this. It was a hit with my team and came in third.

1 Onion

4 cloves of crushed garlic

2 TBLS Olive Oil

1 bottle Woodchuck Cider (your choice of flavor)

1/4 Cup soy sauce

2 TBLS Worcestershire Sauce

2 TBLS Apple cider vinegar

2 TBLS Mustard BBQ sauce

1lb smoked pulled pork (no sauce)

1 roasted pablano pepper

2 roasted bell peppers (red and yellow)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsb black pepper

1/4 tsp celery salt

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp Chili powder (or to taste)

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can black beans

1. Dice the onion and saute in a pan with the olive oil and garlic until it is translucent.
2. Add cider, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar and BBQ sauce; bring it to a boil and let it reduce down.
3. Add the pork and mix it in.
4. Chop up the roasted peppers and add them to the pot. Let it simmer for a bit. (you can put it in a crock pot at this point to let it simmer for a while or to keep it hot when serving)
5. Add all the dry spices and mix it up.
6. Add the tomatoes and the black beans and mix it up. Let it simmer until the smell makes you want to dig in.

I like to smoke the peppers when I make BBQ pork which gives the chili another level of flavor. When I make this I add some of my rub and use the mustard sauce I make. I have found the heat in it comes after the initial flavor to the back of your throat but it is not overpowering.

Snow Q

This weekend I smoked some pork and a brisket. It was the first time I smoked a brisket so I had a bit of fear going into it. I really didn't want to ruin it. The other obstacle I ran into was snow. When it snows it is harder to keep the smoker at the right temperature so the meat may cook quicker (due to high temperature) or longer (due to low temperatures). Well, turned out I had a flat not a whole brisket so it only took about 5 hours to cook it as opposed to 10+.

Another thing I did was video my process. I won an iPod Nano form Dealsplus on twitter and decided to give it a go. the video didn't turn out too bad and neither did the Q. Here is the video:

The snow Q turned to a swamp Q by the end of the day as everything melted.

Below is the final brisket cut up (ok the part that made it the container, the rest was eaten quickly).
And here are the two butts before I pulled them. I didn't take any photos of the pulled pork though.