Grand Rapids results

Finally, the results from the Taste of Grand Rapids competition!  This was our best showing yet.  I was told recently that we shouldn’t expect anything until at least 6 competitions, so I feel we’re really doing well.

The top 15 overall results were:
Grand Champion: CancerSucksChicago.com
Reserve Grand Champion: Bar-B-Quau
3. Hoosier Hogs
4. Big Moe’s BBQ
5. Bad Attitude BBQ
6. Tom & Josh’s Orgasmic Slabs
7. Down Home BBQ
8. Jerry King Midland TX
9. Motly Que Crew
10. Big Creek BBQ
11. Pork of the North
12. Doctor Porkenstein
13. All Day Smoke
14. Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue
15. Donnie’s Bar-B-Que Smoke

Of course, I had to go to 15 to get us in the list!

I have to get some shots of the new Smokehouse in here, too.  The first one is the Smokehouse being pulled into the site.  We felt much more ‘grown up’ as a team this time.  We’d been using Mark’s old landscape trailer before, and just loaded it up.  This time, we used a 9X12 box trailer and pulled the smoker in on its own trailer.  It just felt more like we knew what we were doing.

The next shot is the firebox.  We’re building a fire grate, but we used old Chargriller parts to make something that would let ash fall down.  We still need to improve that to be certain that the fire breathes well all night long.  With the need for more air draw, we used fans to push air into the firebox to keep it up high.  Even with that, the temps were a bit low, but we cooked the pork and brisket through their plateaus at low temps, then brought the temp up to about 250 to finish them off.  This worked pretty well, actually!

We had entries for 4 categories on Friday, but only entered 2 because we had to come up with a way to make 6 servings of everything, and we didn’t have anything small enough to fit 6 in the box for veggies and potatoes, so we just ate them.

We took 10th with our beans, which I was pretty happy with, and our dessert (Mark made bread pudding using Dunkin’ Donuts glazed doughnuts) took 17th.

The organizer stopped by Friday evening and tries some tomato pie, and told us it would likely have won, but that’s how it goes… we liked it, along with the chicken Mark made, potatoes I did on the grill with butter and creme fraiche, and anything else we could find to eat!  On Saturday morning, we turned in a sausage entry that was simple: link sausage dipped a bit in hard cider bbq sauce; we took 17th on that, too.

One thing to remember if you’re going to do competitions: Figure out when YOU need to get your stuff cooking, and don’t pay attention to anyone else.  Someone is likely to tell you that you’re putting you brisket and butts on too early, and someone else will tell you you’re doing it too late.  Have a plan and stick to it.  We didn’t follow our prep checklist very well, but we did stick to our gameplan on cook times.

Ok, the main categories.  For those that don’t know how a KCBS contest works, organizers can have about any categories they can think of, but they must have the four main categories of chicken, pork ribs, pork (butt, picnic or whole shoulder) and brisket, and those four categories are combined to determine Grand Champion.


Chicken was something Mark tried something new with.  It was a risk, and unfortunately didn’t pay off.  I think we just had too much sauce on the chicken, but the flavor was good.  We’re just not quite getting chicken, so we’re going to read some more and maybe take a cooking class that shows us more about what to do for comps.  We got 42nd in chicken. 
We got a 988 and a 889 from two judges, but also got 766, 666, 767 and 656 from the others (the scores are appearance, taste and tenderness).

Ribs had been a problem in the past, but I think it was due to 2 things.  First, the ribs were getting too dark, and, second, they were quite cooked enough.  This time, we did much better.  The rub had no sugar in it at all, and reflected some of the spices used in the hard cider sauce we used to glaze them.  They cooked for 3 hours, then a bit over an hour in foil, then about 2 more hours after that.  They came out looking a deep red, and just the right bend to them.  Our rib scores were 877, 788, 798 (gotta love that 9 in taste!), 867, 867, 989 (also love that one!).  I think we’re going to add a bit more bite along with the sweet used in the sauce.  Also, we mixed a good amount of honey in the sauce before using it as a glaze.  We took 20th with ribs, our first top half finish in ribs!

Pork was next, and we went back to something we did last year… We turned in sliced and pulled.  We also sauced it before turn in, which worked to our advantage because the pulled pork was a bit dry, I think.  Our scores were 877, 765, 988, 588, 899 (LOVE it!!!), and 666 (evil!).  We came out 15th in pork, one of our best showings in pork!  I think we can do better on our slices next time; we need to look at other entries, like what Jeff and Big Creek BBQ turned in for a 3rd place entry.  We also did a ‘no garnish’ entry for pork, and our appearance scores were all over the place.

Brisket did the best, again.  We got an 11th in Carmel, where everything else tanked, though we got lucky since what we turned in was falling apart.  This time, we turned in brisket that was done just about right, pulled apart as it should, was moist, and had great flavor.  A fellow Brethren next to us tried it, and his only response was, ‘Wow!’… Gotta love that!  I tried Fab-B Lite, to use for injecting the brisket.  It really does thicken things up a lot, almost like a gravy.  We did 2 brisket flats with Fab-B Lite and 2 with a coffee/pineapple juice/soy/worcestershire sauce/etc injection.  We turned in the non-Fab-B brisket, and with our results, we picked the right one, I think!  Our scores were 888, 989, 768, 766, 889 and 899 (love that one!), for a 5th place finish in brisket!!!  It was our first walk up to get a ribbon, and we were thrilled to death.  It seems kind of funny to be so happy to walk up to get a ribbon that looks like it’s from the county fair, but all that effort pays off and you get some recognition… What a GREAT feeling!!!!!!

Here are the entry boxes we turned in for the four main categories: