Once we have everything loaded and ready to go on Thursday, we start trimming our ribs/chicken that night. Much easier to do in your own kitchen than on a table under an EZ-up. Just remember, no juking it up until after inspection but trimming is allowed. Also remember to take your receipts just in case they ask for them. We haven't had a problem but others on the forum have, better to be safe than sorry.
You want to get to the event as early as you can Friday morning to get setup. Get your meat inspection out of the way as soon as possible. Get your first table setup and do whatever rubbing/injecting/marinading that you need to do. Then finish the rest of your setup. The cooks meeting is going to be somewhere around 4-5P and the key is to be setup and drinking a cold beverage by the time that happens. You'll get your turnin boxes at the cooks meeting and they can be assembled with the garnish later on in the evening. For a couple of hours after the cooks meeting, walk around and socialize. We're in relax mode until about 8P when we fire up a grill for dinner. Don't forget to pack you a good dinner. A couple of flatiron steaks and prebaked potatoes cooked on a WSM work really well. Sometime after dinner is a really good time to start working on getting your boxes garnished too. :wink:
As far as timetables on the meat, you need to time how long it takes to cook each category and then just work back from the turn in time. Take pork for example, typical turn in time is 1P. If it takes you 10 hours to cook, and then you want to cooler it for another hour or so, give yourself 20 minutes to assemble your box, then figure another 20-30 minutes to get your smoker up to speed. That would have you firing up your smoker around midnight. You have to figure this out for your entries though and write it down. That's the key....writing it all down and having a plan. This stuff is not automatic for us either, we have to sit down with a pad of paper and a pen and write our times down too of what we're going to do and when.
The first contest is nerveracking because you're worried stuff is going to go wrong. Don't sweat the small stuff, just stay focused, remember your times and you'll do fine. It needs to be more fun than work. When it turns into more work than fun, I won't do it anymore.
