My buddy and I entered our first competition this weekend. It was a BLAST! Made lots of new friends and enjoyed some great BBQ!!!
There was 9 or 10 teams. We placed 5th overall and took 3rd in Brisket! We were only a couple of points behind 2nd place. Scoring was way different than I have seen in the past.
Appearance was scored from 2 to 40
Tenderness was scored from 2 to 40
Taste was scored from 4 to 80
There were 5 judges. We scored 622 on our brisket, 608 on pork and 568 on chicken. We were pleased with the results since it was our first competition. We had only done chicken one other time, but thought it came out pretty good.
We were unable to get pictures because of the weather. It rained the entire time we were there. I think that we got in the neighborhood of about 2.5" of rain during the competition. What was grass when we started quickly became a mud pit. We had a 10'x10' Ez-Up for shelter. Had lots of trouble getting the smoker up to temp. We changed from hickory to using oak and didn't realize how hard it would be to get it burning good. Took about 2.5 hours to get the smoker up to 225, but once we got it there, it was pretty easy to maintain the temperatures. We used cherry wood for flavor.
We had to crutch the brisket, as it was only at 155 IT at 9am and turn-in for brisket was at 1230. Foiled it up and put it back on and checked the temp an hour later and it was at 205! We were shooting for 190. So, it was a little overcooked and didn't have much "tug" left, but was still moist and had good flavor.
We also had to crutch the boston butts. Those turned out great, but our competition must have been quite a bit better.
The chicken thighs we did were really good, but we tried using our brand new AMNPS and were unable to get any smoke off of it. We should have just chopped a cherry log into chunks and used it, but we were in such a rush, we chose not to. The skin was bite-through and it was very juicy. The flavor was great, just had no smoke flavor to it. Live and learn, I guess.
We learned a ton while there and everyone was very helpful. We had never done a turn-in box, so we had to be shown how to do our parsley and such. I was able to get a picture of our chicken box and brisket box, but due to time constraints, we were unable to get a picture of our pork box.
I would like to thank everyone on the board for all of your help with everything from tips and techniques to recipes.
I will post the pictures here in a minute from my iMac, since I can't post from my PC for some reason.
There was 9 or 10 teams. We placed 5th overall and took 3rd in Brisket! We were only a couple of points behind 2nd place. Scoring was way different than I have seen in the past.
Appearance was scored from 2 to 40
Tenderness was scored from 2 to 40
Taste was scored from 4 to 80
There were 5 judges. We scored 622 on our brisket, 608 on pork and 568 on chicken. We were pleased with the results since it was our first competition. We had only done chicken one other time, but thought it came out pretty good.
We were unable to get pictures because of the weather. It rained the entire time we were there. I think that we got in the neighborhood of about 2.5" of rain during the competition. What was grass when we started quickly became a mud pit. We had a 10'x10' Ez-Up for shelter. Had lots of trouble getting the smoker up to temp. We changed from hickory to using oak and didn't realize how hard it would be to get it burning good. Took about 2.5 hours to get the smoker up to 225, but once we got it there, it was pretty easy to maintain the temperatures. We used cherry wood for flavor.
We had to crutch the brisket, as it was only at 155 IT at 9am and turn-in for brisket was at 1230. Foiled it up and put it back on and checked the temp an hour later and it was at 205! We were shooting for 190. So, it was a little overcooked and didn't have much "tug" left, but was still moist and had good flavor.
We also had to crutch the boston butts. Those turned out great, but our competition must have been quite a bit better.
The chicken thighs we did were really good, but we tried using our brand new AMNPS and were unable to get any smoke off of it. We should have just chopped a cherry log into chunks and used it, but we were in such a rush, we chose not to. The skin was bite-through and it was very juicy. The flavor was great, just had no smoke flavor to it. Live and learn, I guess.
We learned a ton while there and everyone was very helpful. We had never done a turn-in box, so we had to be shown how to do our parsley and such. I was able to get a picture of our chicken box and brisket box, but due to time constraints, we were unable to get a picture of our pork box.
I would like to thank everyone on the board for all of your help with everything from tips and techniques to recipes.
I will post the pictures here in a minute from my iMac, since I can't post from my PC for some reason.
