Our first competition of 2008

I’ve been swamped with real life yet again, but summer is certainly here. I’m working on getting several posts ready, and I’m going to put a poll up soon about eating local foods.

For our first two years competing in barbecue competitions, we started off each season with Carmel, Indiana, but that competition was canceled last year.  That was too bad, as we really liked the site and the time of the year.   Last year, our first comp was Fairbanks, Indiana, and it was Mark’s (my teammate) first this year.   I couldn’t make it, though, as my niece, Maggie, was graduating from the School of Optometry at the Ohio State University! (GO BUCKS!!!).  Mark competed using the name ‘Oinkadoodle Moo’, and he took a 4th overall!  GREAT job, and it was during a storm that brought 10″ of rain in 24 hours.

Well, as we’re now well into summer, we finally got to the first local competition, 11 miles from my house, 4 miles from Mark’s, the Ohio Vet’s BBQ Competition, put on by two local cooks, Jim Ferguson of Rollin’ Smokes and Jim Weaver of Jimmy’s Hogpen.   This was the first year it was a sanctioned competition, the 2nd year for the comp, and it had a field of 39 teams.  The setting is very parklike, with large trees all over the area where teams set up. We had a nice, shady spot, and, even though it was over 90 degrees, the shade and breeze made it really nice all weekend long.

The competition was really well run, with really just one glitch.  The biggest glitch was that ice ran out Friday night.  We were told that more ice was coming around 9 pm, and at 11 pm found out there wasn’t any more.   I had to go get some, as we really needed it and wouldn’t have made it through the night without it.  We really don’t like serving rotten chicken to judges, regardless of our scores! If ice is part of the entry fee, then someone should have gone to get some ice for us, in my opinion.  All in all, a pretty small issue.The reasons 39 teams showed up for only the 2nd year of this comp were that it was put on by cooks, so things would be done with the cooks in mind (a good thing), and the grand champion has a 50% chance of going to the Jack Daniels Invitational later this year (a big deal comp)!

Instead of a blow-by-blow account of the whole thing, I’ll cut to the chase…The Grand Champion was Eagle River, a local (Dayton) team that did a great job.  There were also 17 teams from the BBQ Brethren, which was great! Jim Beam was a sponsor, and they supplied the shots for Saturday morning for all the teams; tell me a cold shot of bourbon at 10 am won’t wake you up!

We did alright. We were unhappy with some of our entries, a bit disappointed in some of our placements, but overall had a great time.  We came in something like 30th in chicken, which was very salty.  The only thing about chicken was one of our scores was so much lower than the others, I just hope the KCBS rep talked to that judge about scoring so much lower.   Judge 1 gave us a 5-5-4, which basically means it looked bad, tasted bad, and was so tough he couldn’t really chew it.   Sorry, but our chicken looked pretty good, was very tender, but was overly salty.   This judge had no clue what they were doing.

Our ribs were undercooked, period. They looked ok, and I did the best I could to pick ribs that were more done, sacrificing the best looking for the best tasting. 2 judges liked us, though, giving us a 9-9-9 and a 9-8-9 (9 is the highest score).  We took 11th in ribs, which was probably higher than we should have placed.Our pork was excellent, and our score showed.   We took 2nd, getting dogtags and a check (the dogtags were a very cool trophy to get from an American Legion sponsored event, I think).  Pardon the blur on the pork; I was in a hurry! 

Overall, we took 10th place, which at least got a mention. We had a really great time, and I want to thank Martin (who also built our smoker) and Scott for being so much help throughout the comp. Scott helped with everything he could, with a smile the whole time, and Martin tended our fires overnight so Mark and I could each go home and get a bit of sleep. However, Mark called me halfway through my 4 hours, and I never got back to sleep!!! (Sorry, I had to whine about it some more!)

Here are a bunch more photos from the competition, to try to give you all an idea of what it was like. Our next competition will be in Sharonville, Ohio (Cincinnati) on September 12-13. If anyone is local and wants to see what a competition is all about, drop me an email!

That’s about it for our first comp of our fourth year! We’re ready for more now…