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Next weekend, my wife and I are going to St. Louis, MO, to take a KCBS judging class. Afterwards, we’ll supposedly be certified barbecue judges. However, our intent is more to learn what judges are ‘looking for’, so when we compete, we have a better idea in mind. |
I’ve gone back and forth on
an item related to judging… Do you cater to the judges or just cook
the best barbecue you know how? On one hand, the purist in me says to
cook the best barbecue I know how. On the other hand, I think that the
perspective best to take is to consider the judges my customers.
If
you take an example of something like chili, let’s look at this a bit
deeper. There’s a place in Houston called Goode Company that makes a
killer chili; I mean killer as in I tried it in 1980, when I was not
quite 17, and I think it killed a part of me! The taste is great, but
it was so hot I couldn’t stand it. To the cook at Goode Company, that
was real chili; to me, it was liquid fire with meat chunks. If I’d
been judging that, how would I rate it? Probably not very high because
it was nothing but hot to me. So would the cook, if he were presenting
that chili to me, be better served by toning down the hot or remaining
pure to his chili beliefs? If he wants to win, he probably should
consider that the judging is done by someone that might not like it as
hot as he does.
I go to competitions not to say that I can
make a mean brisket the way I like it; I do it to see how the judges
stack mine up against everyone else’s brisket. Does this mean they
should all taste the same? No, but there’s a starting point from which
to make mine different.
So with all that said, I hope next
week to get a better idea of what the judges are told to look for, so I
can do this year’s practices and comps with that in mind. We moved up
in the ranks a bit between our first and second competition, but still
only got the top third as our best. This year, I want to be called up
for something. Winning money would be good, but just getting a call
would be even better! Obviously, we’d do this even if there was no
money to win… as we haven’t won any yet!
We’re heading to St.
Louis on Friday, hoping to talk to the people cooking for the class and
getting more tips, then doing the class on Saturday. After that, I’ll
post my thoughts on the actual class.
