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Comp Chicken/Educate Me Please

In my two contests I walked in my first (7th) and a (12th) in the other with rubbed, no sauce, soaked wood chip direct grilled wings.
Tips off and web cut to ease separation. All right or left hand chicken arms.
Flipped until golden brown and crisp.
Why chicken wings? I judged for 6 years before I decided to cook for my Master CBJ, in those six years I and others would hope to see some wings.
Easy peasey.
Ed
 
gettinbasted said:
From my experience at around 200 competitions cooked and in my restaurants is that people (op aside), almost without exception, have their mind’s blown by properly prepared competition chicken. It’s that far above what they normally get as “BBQ chicken”.
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As I judge I love the chicken category...I won't say it's my favorite, but it's definitely above pork. As a cook I enjoy eating competition style thighs when doing practice cooks, but I also enjoy eating chicken other ways too. I'm from KC so a little sauce doesn't bother me one bit :thumb:
 
gettinbasted said:
I blame Travis Clark. I think he single handedly ruined competition chicken by teaching the entire known universe how to cook it.
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A fair assignment of blame! Haha.

That Mankato comp also has an odd history of scoring. It's not uncommon for the greatest of teams to make top 5 one of the days and middle pack the other. Seems like scores are usually higher on day 2 also. Plus, with the new judge seating system it's pretty evident that scores will continue to be razor thin. Which table you land on (and who else is on it) will certainly have a big impact on whether your score falls within that 3 point range of 1st-10th. We can't afford to give up a single point - which is why I have to spend so much damn time making sure every piece of chicken is the exact same shape and size and placed in the pan oh-so-perfectly so as not to take on an odd shape during the cook. There's your homogenized bbq.
 
Two Fat Pollacks on Long Island perfected making BBQ chicken that looked and tasted like deep fried chicken. They stopped doing it partly because the reps got called over to the table a lot to determine if it was legal, but mainly because it scored very high or very low. Judges loved it or hated it.

Creative entries might find some fans, but you are going to get punished by some judges, and it only takes 2 for you to have a bad day.
 
gettinbasted said:
The judges are all that matter. If they truly want something else, they’ll ultimately get it. KCBS does not (directly) dictate what BBQ is. That has been molded by the decisions of judges over the last 30+ years of KCBS competitions and continues to get defined every Saturday.

From my experience at around 200 competitions cooked and in my restaurants is that people (op aside), almost without exception, have their mind’s blown by properly prepared competition chicken. It’s that far above what they normally get as “BBQ chicken”.

I do feel the OPs pain, however, because I bet that it does get extremely old tasting the same flavors time and time again, but I can’t imagine this is unique to just chicken. I also guess that it makes it extremely hard to judge. He needs to understand that our goal as competition cooks is not to make the best BBQ he’s ever had. That’s too personal. Our goal is to make the best BBQ that 6 different people with different life experiences and different palates can agree on. This is why the top teams go easy on the smoke and why sage or other spices are used sparingly. You may love it, but I promise another judge hates it. We actually want nothing to stand out. If a judge can pick out a particular spice in my food, I’ve lost. We call it middle of the road BBQ (flavor, not quality). I compare cooking chicken to teeing off. I could pull out the driver, swing hard and try for 350 yards off the tee and be damned where it goes, but I’d much prefer to hit one about 230 right down the middle of the fairway and move on to ribs. So I cook pretty, expertly cooked thighs, dunked in a Blues Hog mix. Safe. Down the middle.

The margins between these cooks has become razor thin. Understand that the entries at an event like Mankato last weekend are all going to be very close because the teams were very close in ability. A judge deciding to make up their own scoring criteria such as creativity or deciding that a new average should be formed because all the entries that day are very much the same can have big consequences when the top 4 places were all over 700 and within 1 taste point from 1 judge of each other. The difference between winning and losing could have been not hitting this table in chicken.

There have been many innovations since I’ve started cooking, but eventually the cat gets out of the bag and that innovation quickly becomes the norm. I hear people say all the time is that it should be a meat contest (and I agree). These same people will then talk about the lack of creativity. One thing the homogenization of comp BBQ due to classes and the internet has done is made it all about the meat. When the entire field uses the same (or similar) sauces and rubs it truly does come down to who cooked that piece of meat the best.
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Very very well stated GB, you nailed it!
We don't have a problem with boring chicken in Texas, recently "ugly burnt birds win" is an ongoing and true joke"
The issue I see here is the OP is expecting bbq to taste like what he likes,
" I did give a flavor "9" to one of the red chickens because the cook got a nice mild smoke flavor into it. Otherwise, the red chicken thighs I've been getting are pretty much an 8 for me.

Wings?? How about some wings? Last week I did a batch at home Weber/vortex with Oakridge Secret Weapon rub and a few chunks of apple wood tossed in the coals. I would love to get something like that in a turn-in box!"
that's a very big problem in Texas where team members are allowed to judge, they always or in 99% of the cases score based on their own perception of what bbq is instead of listening to what the table monitor tells them to do. But we do still have a very different scoring system that needs to be overhauled very soon.
"
Your the judge, you should score it as presented. Didn't you learn that in the class?

You shouldn't be asking anyone on what good chicken is or how it should be presented or why it's presented like that, just score it for what the cook presented. It's just that simple!"
This :thumb:

In our Texas style competition classes we teach what I call the "6,7,8 strategy" I dont want the judges to LOVE my food but I do want every judge on the table to at least LIKE it which usually means at least 6,7, or 8 in scores and will give an overall total that will usually win or at least get a walk in the top ten. If 9's and 10's are received I just call it a bonus.
ArnieTex

OP no disrespect just saying that we cook to get those middle of the road scores that total out high enough to hopefully win.
thanks
 
ArnieTex said:
Very very well stated GB, you nailed it!
We don't have a problem with boring chicken in Texas, recently "ugly burnt birds win" is an ongoing and true joke"
The issue I see here is the OP is expecting bbq to taste like what he likes,
" I did give a flavor "9" to one of the red chickens because the cook got a nice mild smoke flavor into it. Otherwise, the red chicken thighs I've been getting are pretty much an 8 for me.

Wings?? How about some wings? Last week I did a batch at home Weber/vortex with Oakridge Secret Weapon rub and a few chunks of apple wood tossed in the coals. I would love to get something like that in a turn-in box!"
that's a very big problem in Texas where team members are allowed to judge, they always or in 99% of the cases score based on their own perception of what bbq is instead of listening to what the table monitor tells them to do. But we do still have a very different scoring system that needs to be overhauled very soon.
"
Your the judge, you should score it as presented. Didn't you learn that in the class?

You shouldn't be asking anyone on what good chicken is or how it should be presented or why it's presented like that, just score it for what the cook presented. It's just that simple!"
This :thumb:

In our Texas style competition classes we teach what I call the "6,7,8 strategy" I dont want the judges to LOVE my food but I do want every judge on the table to at least LIKE it which usually means at least 6,7, or 8 in scores and will give an overall total that will usually win or at least get a walk in the top ten. If 9's and 10's are received I just call it a bonus.
ArnieTex

OP no disrespect just saying that we cook to get those middle of the road scores that total out high enough to hopefully win.
thanks
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Well said Arnie, as comp cooks we want to wow everyone's taste buds including our own, but sometimes we get in trouble trying to do that. Judges don't share our taste buds and expectations of what good BBQ is. It's like trying to stand out in a black tie affair.. be careful lol
 
Burnt at Both Endz said:
Your the judge, you should score it as presented. Didn't you learn that in the class?

You shouldn't be asking anyone on what good chicken is or how it should be presented or why it's presented like that, just score it for what the cook presented. It's just that simple!
Click to expand...

So, after judging 3 contests you're one of those that brings your own personal likes and dislikes to the judging table? You're the kind of judge that makes a team cringe. Before you get too set in your judging mistakes, you should retake the judging class, AND LISTEN THIS TIME! OR QUIT JUDGING!:mad2:
 
Burnt at Both Endz said:
Your the judge, you should score it as presented. Didn't you learn that in the class?

You shouldn't be asking anyone on what good chicken is or how it should be presented or why it's presented like that, just score it for what the cook presented. It's just that simple!
Click to expand...

dirtydingus said:
So, after judging 3 contests you're one of those that brings your own personal likes and dislikes to the judging table? You're the kind of judge that makes a team cringe. Before you get too set in your judging mistakes, you should retake the judging class, AND LISTEN THIS TIME! OR QUIT JUDGING!:mad2:
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I have no idea how you got that out of the quoted post :confused:

But, stop the personal attacks! Feel free to discuss this civilly, but this type of attack is not going to be tolerated.
 
Ron_L said:
I have no idea how you got that out of the quoted post :confused:

But, stop the personal attacks! Feel free to discuss this civilly, but this type of attack is not going to be tolerated.
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Yeah, I don't know where he got that BaBE had only judged 3 times. Hell, he's cooked more than a lot of guys, though I don't know how many times if at all he's judged.

That said, I thought this was going to get good. Thanks for the buzzkill :)
 
Ron_L said:
... But, stop the personal attacks! Feel free to discuss this civilly, but this type of attack is not going to be tolerated.
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No worries, @Ron_L. (OP here)

I didn't understand @Burnt at Both Endz's post, asked for clarification, and got nothing. So, end of story.

I found @dirtydingus's post to mostly be funny. Apparently he has never been to a judging class. Of course, it's subjective (aka "personal likes and dislikes"). It can be nothing else and the class doesn't try to make it anything else. What the scoring system tries to do is to standardize the subjective impressions of the judges into scores:
"The scoring system is from 9 to 2; 9 is excellent, 8 very good, 7 above average, 6 average, 5 below average, 4 poor, 3 bad, and 2 inedible. "
​
Nothing in the class material is telling anyone what, objectively, any of these things means. What the class teaches is that, if a judge subjectively considers the sample to be average, then he should write down a "6." If he considers it to be "excellent" he should write down a "9."

One of my class notes on Taste, verbatim from the instructor is: "Good Flavor = Memorable, want to repeat." What could be more subjective than that?

You want "objective?" Buy yourself a million dollar lab with machines to evaluate tenderness in milliNewtons and mass spectrometers to parse out the spice flavors and evaluate them against a standard profile. But even there you fail, because "Appearance" can't be quantified. Again from my notes: "Appearance --- want to eat it."

Sorry, @dirtydingus, judging is subjective. You can go to as many judging classes as you like and I don't think you'll be able to come to any other conclusion.

Again, thanks to all (well, most. :wink:), for contributing to my education.
 
dirtydingus said:
So, after judging 3 contests you're one of those that brings your own personal likes and dislikes to the judging table? You're the kind of judge that makes a team cringe. Before you get too set in your judging mistakes, you should retake the judging class, AND LISTEN THIS TIME! OR QUIT JUDGING!:mad2:
Click to expand...

Ron_L said:
I have no idea how you got that out of the quoted post :confused:

But, stop the personal attacks! Feel free to discuss this civilly, but this type of attack is not going to be tolerated.
Click to expand...

Ron, I don't think that was pointed to me, I know he is a MCBJ, just as I am. I also visit at contests with him and his wife, when both of us were cooking, have even shared my chicken with them. I think he was making the point that I hoped my quote would make on the OP.....don't come to the judging tent looking for a specific kind, flavor, look, etc. A judge should leave all those things at the door and just judge the entries as presented. He is overthinking it for just judging 3 times.
 
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Burnt at Both Endz said:
Ron, I don't think that was pointed to me, I know he is a MCBJ, just as I am. I also visit at contests with him and his wife, when both of us were cooking, have even shared my chicken with them. I think he was making the point that I hoped my quote would make on the OP.....don't come to the judging tent looking for a specific kind, flavor, look, etc. A judge should leave all those things at the door and just judge the entries as presented. He is overthinking it for just judging 3 times.
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Maybe not, but it was your post that he quoted and it was still inappropriate no matter who the target was.
 
Burnt at Both Endz said:
... the point that I hoped my quote would make on the OP.....don't come to the judging tent looking for a specific kind, flavor, look, etc. A judge should leave all those things at the door and just judge the entries as presented. He is overthinking it for just judging 3 times.
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OK, now I understand. My point in the OP is that all the chicken I have sampled is the same. That leads to boredom. If all the chicken was savory and unsauced, that would probably be boring too and I'd be longing for a sauced red one.

Somebody mentioned that their commercial customers really liked the red chicken too. Same-o, I might like it too if I got it in isolation rather than as the fifth piece of six.

So it's nothing that I am bringing as a preconception. It's just an effect from my three experiences.

Someone else mentioned that the other three meats are also pretty close to identical. I have thought about that but so far at least that's not my experience. My best memory of the last comp was a brisket box that was arranged to emphasize the bark. It really did make me want to eat the meat. It was great and I ended up giving it all 9s. Ribs, too, seem to me to have more differences than the chicken. In pork, maybe there is not so much flavor variety but at least the turn-in boxes are not all the same --- some more attractive than others.

So ... not trying to argue. Just to learn.
 
airedale said:
That leads to boredom. If all the chicken was savory and unsauced, that would probably be boring too and I'd be longing for a sauced red one.
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I just hope you don't punish the teams for that. You might prefer something different, but judge it as presented. They are giving you what MOST judges like. (If most judges didn't like it, you would be getting something else.)

Remember Roger Ebert? Unlike many movie critics, he would sometimes give great reviews to low brow movies. He didn't reserve favorable reviews only for "art" films like some critics do. Not every director is trying to make If a movie was supposed to be a raunchy comedy, he would evaluate it against the spectrum of other raunchy comedies. Did the director execute on what he set out to achieve? Was it funny? Did it hold his attention? Was there craftsmanship in the acting and production values?

Judging is the same way. You might like a sage rosemary chicken, but you have to ask yourself did the cook execute well on what they presented to you? Was it tender? Tasty? A good balance of savoy, smokey, sweet, and heat? Did it look good for what it was? If you are reviewing "Something About Mary" you can't judge it is if it was "Citizen Kane."
 
CBQ said:
I just hope you don't punish the teams for that. You might prefer something different, but judge it as presented. They are giving you what MOST judges like. (If most judges didn't like it, you would be getting something else.)

Remember Roger Ebert? Unlike many movie critics, he would sometimes give great reviews to low brow movies. He didn't reserve favorable reviews only for "art" films like some critics do. Not every director is trying to make If a movie was supposed to be a raunchy comedy, he would evaluate it against the spectrum of other raunchy comedies. Did the director execute on what he set out to achieve? Was it funny? Did it hold his attention? Was there craftsmanship in the acting and production values?

Judging is the same way. You might like a sage rosemary chicken, but you have to ask yourself did the cook execute well on what they presented to you? Was it tender? Tasty? A good balance of savoy, smokey, sweet, and heat? Did it look good for what it was? If you are reviewing "Something About Mary" you can't judge it is if it was "Citizen Kane."
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Did you just call my chicken a low brow, raunchy comedy?
 
CBQ said:
I just hope you don't punish the teams for that. You might prefer something different, but judge it as presented. They are giving you what MOST judges like. (If most judges didn't like it, you would be getting something else.)

Remember Roger Ebert? Unlike many movie critics, he would sometimes give great reviews to low brow movies. He didn't reserve favorable reviews only for "art" films like some critics do. Not every director is trying to make If a movie was supposed to be a raunchy comedy, he would evaluate it against the spectrum of other raunchy comedies. Did the director execute on what he set out to achieve? Was it funny? Did it hold his attention? Was there craftsmanship in the acting and production values?

Judging is the same way. You might like a sage rosemary chicken, but you have to ask yourself did the cook execute well on what they presented to you? Was it tender? Tasty? A good balance of savoy, smokey, sweet, and heat? Did it look good for what it was? If you are reviewing "Something About Mary" you can't judge it is if it was "Citizen Kane."
Click to expand...

I had a seasoned judge explain it to me as "judging each entry for what it is, instead of what it is not". Was it well balanced? Was it over cooked? He also gave an example of a rib he had that wasn't perfectly balanced. The salt and heat were elevated in comparison to other qualities. It got a 9 from him because it worked really well and he wanted a rack of them. <-----Judged as presented, on merit. He told me he typically preferred milder Bbq, but that particular combination just worked for him that day. <---ignored personal preference and preconceived ideas.

I think almost all judges try to do the best they can. Some do a better job than others. The OP came in looking for info, and probably got more than he expected:mrgreen: I hope he takes it as intended and found something of value that will help him in the future.
 
airedale said:
In virtually every case the chicken was cooked near perfection but almost completely uncontaminated by smoke. In every single case, the pieces were coated in identical-looking red sauce. Mostly it was identical tasting (sweet) too.
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I'm curious what kind of numbers those well laid out cooked to perfection flavor balanced boxes got from you. Care to share?
 
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