Comp box help - Pork

Hey all, I was wondering if my fellow brethren would offer some advice. We cooked the When Pigs Fly comp in McPherson, KS this weekend and overall we sucked! Instead of taking a step forward we took 2 steps back.

Our pork and ribs totally bombed, ribs 29th out of 33 and pork 32. The last comp we did we were middle of the pack on these two meats, I believe 13 in pork and ribs got 26th out of 32 even though we only put 6 ribs in the box and 2 were hanging together by a piece of bark (1's appearence).

The one cardinal rule we broke was we switched rubs from our old reliable to a commercial and the bark on the pork was like leather even after foiling for a couple hours. And we cooked the pork on our new GMG Whole Hog instead of the tucker cooker. Appearence and taste had several 6's and 7's. Texture was okay. We submitted pulled, lightly sauced and chunks dipped in sauce. The sauce was our rasberry chipotle that we have done decent with in the past, diluted with rasberry/cranberry juice.

The ribs we also used the new rub otherwise I cooked them identical to how I have in the past. The judges hated the taste (2-6's and 2-7's!), where we got all 8's and 9's last time.

Lesson we learned - don't try new things at Comps!!!

Got our first call in Chicken (8th) though after being right on the line for quite awhile.

Here are pictures of our turn-ins, let me know what you think. I didn't think the pork looked great but was it 6 worthy? ray:

We are cooking the Garden City, KS comp in a month and we would like to take a step forward from this one.

Pictures are Pork, Ribs, Chicken (guess how it's prepped?), Brisket. Cell phone pics, sorry:doh:

CMALANGA said:

Yes its a six. How do I know...I've turned in several boes that looked exactly like yours, that I thought looked good and got the same scores you did...consistently. I don't think it looks bad at all, but then again I've gotten sixes most of the time in Pork appearence.

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I did try to slice the money muscle, but the bark was so tough it just fell appart. Not even the Ken Shun would slice it:doh: our intention was to do money muscle slices and chunks. Like I said, lesson learned! Thanks alot for all the feedback. Next comp we are planning on going back to the old KC style rub we make or Yardbird.

SteerCrazy said:

I WOULD like to know more about that chicken :becky:

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It's a deboned whole chicken rolled and tied:crazy:. Moisture and tenderness has been awesome, trying to perfect the appearance. Haven't got horrible appearance scores, but the light saucing looks blotchy. I want something more of a smooth glaze but don't want to mess with the flavor and moisture of the meat.

We do this for catering with chickens and turkeys. We had been doing so horribly in chicken that what did we have to lose in a comp? Another DAL? The couple times we have done it one judge always seems freaked out that it isn't another square thigh and gives us (like this comp) all 7's. The other judges have been receptive of the change.:becky:

Phil, I'll try to catch some pictures when my dad does it next. He does the chicken prep and I do the rolling/tie. I have not been able to perfect the bird cleaning, it looks like chopped chicken when I get done.

I'm going to play with it this weekend and work on the glaze. The seasoning we use works well, so I hate to change the flavor profile to much.

I'll also be practicing ribs and pork, obviously!