First 2006 competition over

It’s all over, including the crying…  We just got back from Carmel, Indiana, and the 2006 Bodacious Blues B-Q.  We had high hopes of bettering our last year’s ranking, but we met with mixed results.

Warning… This post has pictures of food!!!

The competition had great weather.  Friday was off and on cloudy, and it sprinkled a bit into the night, but never really rained.  The weather was in the 60′s Friday, down to the mid 40′s overnight, and near 70 and very sunny on Saturday.

Before going on, I want to thank two people:  First is Tony Hunter for going above and beyond in helping us out.  He’s a great guy, and he knows he’s welcome at our tent any time.  Also, Stephan of Shigs and Pits was extremely helpful, helping us put up our tent, loaning us a shutoff for the hose, and giving us some good advice.  I’d be happy to be next to them at any comp. 

We had our best showing in brisket, with 11th out of 38.  However, we had horrible showings in all other categories, with a 34th placing overall.  The pork surprised me, and I thought we did better in ribs and chicken, too, but the judges thought otherwise.

First, we did Anything Butt Friday night.  As I’ve said before, I think this should just be whatever we’re having for dinner when it’s a Friday night turn in.  That way, I don’t really care how we’d do.  We thought we’d do better than near the bottom, though, but I wasn’t upset, really.  One of the judges came by for another sandwich… He liked it that much, but he must have been the only one at the table that did!  We did a form of pit beef sandwiches with chipotle flavored tomatoes on the roasts.  We put them on very good buns with sour cream horseradish sauce.

Friday night, we had butts and briskets going, and, thanks to Tony Hunter helping out, Mark and I were able to get about 3 1/2 solid hours of sleep.. that was GREAT!  We learned to have better sleeping arrangements this year, and I borrowed a tent from a friend.  This was so much better than we’ve done before, and I’ll do it every time!  Sleep is good… I got enough that I wasn’t as frazzled on Saturday.

Turn ins started at 12:00 noon with chicken.  The chicken wasn’t as dark as it appears, and, looking at it now, I can see why the appearance scores weren’t great.  I think we’d have done better if we’d left the front leg next to the left one.  We tried something new, and it didn’t work.

The chicken tasted better than the judges thought!  That’s easy to say… but we actually got kind of mixed scores, some really liking it, some not liking it much.  The skin was better, as we cooked at a bit higher temperature, and we used an espresso based sauce that we liked.  I’m not convinced that it’s not a good sauce; I think maybe our rub got too dark, not the sauce.

Ribs were next, and I wasn’t thrilled with the look; however, we thought they tasted pretty good.  We did a different presentation, and got mixed results.  I still think this works better than we did before, but maybe we should add a couple of ribs on the sides showing the meat more.  However, they got a bit dark; next time, we’re cutting back even more on the sugar in the rub, and adding more during foiling.  We didn’t place well, but a couple of judges that came by after the judging had ribs and said they really liked them.  We just need to keep tweaking. 

After ribs was pulled pork.  We tried something different with better pieces then just pulling the whole thing; we won’t make that mistake again!  We did 3 butts; we thought we’d warped into the 3 pigs world… one was too dry, one was too overdone and one was just right!  Or so we thought.  We liked it at least!  I think we need to work on some of the lettuce.

The last turn in was brisket.  We decided to turn in some burnt ends with it; that’s the flavor we liked, and we hoped that judges would be tempted to grab a piece or two.  We did pretty well with this, using our own injection with coffee and pineapple juice.  We had some issues with brisket, too; 2 of them were done to the right temp, but like rubber.  I could have used slices for slingshots.  The last was a bit overdone, but the middle pieces worked out pretty well, with the ends cut up for the burnt ends.  We need to work a bit on appearance here, still, but we did pretty well.  Just another point in appearance would have put us in the top 10!

More to come from the comp; I have pics of banners from several teams and the prep of the area and meats.

Oh, however we did, we had a GREAT time!!!  I made the decision with my wife to stay Saturday night, and I’m glad I did; we got up Sunday and took our time getting back home to a really nice Sunday afternoon and evening.