Thursday, September 29, 2011

BBQ Contest with Mike

My brother Mike who lives in Newport News inivited me to join him in an official Kansas City BBQ Contest. It is an inaugural contest for 'Bay Days' the downtown Hampton, Va fair. There were four categories, Poultry, Ribs, Brisket and Pork... The Grand Champion is the winner of all four categories and received a 5 digit sum of money! So naturally, we had to enter all four categories. A friend of Mike's joined us to make up the 'Meataterians' team.

I took a bunch of video of the contest on our video camera which I can't post here, but when we first go there, we realized that we were out of our league. Some of the 'competition' had local restaurants, and a few posted their numerous trophies from around the country in front of their area. But, there were also some novices, or rookies, like ourselves, so we thoguht we had a chance to at least place (1-5 get awards).

Turn in starts at 11:00 AM on Saturday, but due to the nature of smoking meat, everyone starts smoking sometime late Friday night or very early Saturday morning. Why not make the turn in at 3 Pm, so I could get some sleep? Don't the judges know I have two little girls at home that keep me from sleeping as it is? We started around 10 PM or 11 PM as I recall...and I did doze off for a couple hours.



Above is the Briskett

and the ribs


and the chicken before cooking. We all like thighs/dark meat, so that's what Mike purchased and then de-boned...




the chicken going on the smoker...




the ribs nearing completion




making me very hungry... forget teh competition, let's just eat!



the Pork (shoulder)...



....fall off the pone...




the Pork turn in...some with the crust, some without...




the ribs at turn in



the chicken at turn in...Bertie (Mike's wife) helped with the 'plating', which was also scored in addition to taste.

The briskett...



YouTube Video

doesn't that look good?




YouTube Video


and the final plating of the briskett...


At the award presentation, they started with poultry and the fifth place award and they called, 'Meataterians'!!!! To our surprise, we were in fifth place for chicken! We started to let it get to us and I know I started to think, those Chinn boys really know what they are doing with the smoker's, they aren't amateur backyard smokers!!! We can take on these nationwide professional smokers and restaurant owners!


Well... we didn't place in any thing else and as expected the 'professionals' got most of the awards, but Mike (and the team) came away with a small check and a medal.... Where's the next contest, maybe Woodstock, Va....


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