Advise Sought From the Brethren: Rib Cookoff Logistics

Not seeking any proprietary information, just logistical advice to avoid a major embarrassment.


I entered the Hicksville FD People Choice Rib Cookoff, since it helps a good cause and for the challenge of seeing if I can pull this off. Plus as a People's Choice, I can go with what I think tastes good and not have to cook to a standard, while gaining experience.

2 case of ribs gets delivered at 7am and public samples from 1 - 4pm.


I have as my hardware two 22in WSMs a small brinkman vertical charcoal smoker (the HD one that looks like a safe) and a weber 22.5 kettle.

I also have a 4 burner summit gasser with a side burner and a weber 200 Q portable Q. I should also have a portable single burner.


Will this be enough to cook 40 slabs? (assume I do the 4-1-1 method)


Can I use the large gasser to finish ribs that might be taking too long?


I understand that you can serve a side dish with the ribs? Who does that work? Do you put a single rib and a small side on a paper cocktail plate?


any other advice/tips/warnings?

my mistake


2 cases = 24 slabs



two 22.5 wsms using rib racks should be fine

boogiesnap said:

run them hotter than usual to account for the extra meat.

allow ALOT of time for dealing with that many racks. rubbing, saucing, foiling, etc. it is VERY different than cooking a slab or 2 at home.

also be sure to rotate the meat on the racks. if yours are like mine, the top will cook faster but the bottoms will burn a bit.

give em smoke for a couple hours, foil em, and stack.

you CAN hold some in a cooler, but be sure to vent them first. just don't stuff em all in unvented. don't ask.

Click to expand...

Ok, let me ask. Do they turn to mush?


Since we are having fun and no where near ready for kcbs judging, I'm going with a little tribute to my hispanic roots, with adding a little guava flavor to the ribs, mango to the cole slaw and coffee to the baked beans.


I am assuming we give people a cocktail paper plate with a rib and two soufflé cups (one with the cole slaw and one with the beans) and a spork.

Just making sure that this would be within the rules and appropriate for a people's choice.

thanks. I have two large WSMs so I think we are solid on the cookers.

We'll keep the kettle for back up.

Looking forward to this event. Thanks to the bretheren for the help and for all the posts with information.

motoeric said:

You can use the kettle for finishing the ribs if you want to have the sauce settle before putting them out for the public.

Fitting six ribs per grate on the 22" shouldn't be a problem if your using rib racks. You may also want to stagger the times you put the ribs on, as the serving will go until 4.

Are we allowed side dishes? How did I miss that?

Eric

Click to expand...

ditto

I think the rules email is supposed to go out tomorrow

folks, thank you very much for your help:








since it was a peoples choice, we focused more on crowd friendly flavors, and nor running out. for example, our sauce was a combination of a tomato paste/vinegar simple classic recipe, blues hog and sweet baby rays - as we started to realize we didn't have enough. Then we added a jar honey and a small can of pineapple sauce to avoid disaster later in the day. The general public lieked it considering one of our sides was grilled pineapple (thanks to phil for posting that recipe) and the pineapples on display






I am not sure we timed everything right. We planned on 5 hours for the first racks, but quickly noticed our team was the only team with ribs in the smoker. GrillScouts were kind enough to share that the racks were thin and would cook quickly, so when we came foiling them, we decided to palce them in the cooler to hold off cooking and avoid turning them into mush. I would say at that point, they were folding just shy of a 90 degree right angle.

After an hour in the cooler, we unfoiled them and put them back in the smoker.

At 1pm, the first rack bent nicely, but it wasn't fall off the bone, and certainly didn't pull back nearly as much as I expected. The ribs had a nice smoke ring. We collected a few early votes and so we asked for feedback (once we got over the initial shock of strangers voting for our ribs ), and s few people told us our ribs were the most fall of the bone.

OK, I'll take their word for it.

For some reason, we were serving fast and furious that first hour and we were going through ribs much faster that we expected, so I never foiled the second smoker, which we had planned for a 2 pm ready.

Which meant at 2pm, the KCBS turn in was going more of an after thought.


What happened next is I took our most cooked rack and took three of the larger ribs;




that's not our final final


We had followed the tutorial on how to trim spares that was posted in qtalk, at least we thought we did. I noticed the ribs had that cartliledge tip. I wasn't sure, and at the last second I trimmed the tops of those rubs to the bone.

Was that a mistake?

Then I dabbed a little of whatever our sauce had become on top (not much, just a little wet.


So let's here it about those turn ins.


thanks