First Contest and I made it out alive (with pics)

We just finished our first contest this past weekend at the Harvard Fall Festival. This past weekend was amazing the weather was great, well except for Sat night when it 34*. The people were amazing, friendly helpfull and WICKED FUN. I have never had so much fun getting my but handed to me.
I want to thank everyone who helped us out this weekend and offered advice. Everyone was great

It was a very humbling experiance to see what truly good BBQ should be. wicked different than the back yard stuff. lol

When we went our goal was to turn everything in on time and not come in last place... :roll: well everything got turned in and we were 39th out of 40 over all.. so not DAL. :roll:
heres a few pics of the party eeerrrrrr I mean contest.

Just got there and nothing fell out on the way. Man i need a trailer....


All Set up


Best way to make friends... Beer and TP My wife and co-cook is on the left. They ran out of tp this year and we just happened to have some....


It got very cold on Sat. "NAAAWWW I dont need a jacket" says I as we left the house. My wife on the other hand was prepared.


Sarah turning out lettuce into a near putting green.


Our Turn in boxes






First off I forgot my time table at home so it was a disaster.

We did horrable in chicken and ribs, came in last on those. My CHicken was frightening. as one judge said on the comment card. "DEAD COOKING CAUSTIC CHICKEN" I spit the bite I took out and said a prayer that i didnt kill anyone with it..... not sure what went wrong there it was always good before.. oh well

My ribs came off the smoker about 3 1/2 hours earlyer than i wanted and almost over cooked I Wasn't thinking when i put them on and went my my offset time not my UDS time and poof dry ribs. i think they tasted great but not after 4 hours in foil in a cooler. oh well

Brisket we hit 37th place woohooo it was prob my third best brisket ever. It was also my third brisket ever so Im sure it will move down on the scale. I only had one rack on the UDS and the two briskets choked them so it didnt have the correct air flow never went above 170 and it was turn in time so we pulled and sliced them bumma .

Now my pork butt it was by far the worst i ever cooked the bark was almost like burnt charcoal and the meat , although cooked right tasted wierd to me. But i plated it with what i could find out of the two butts i cooked and the few peices of bark i could find that were edable and skipped the sauce because it would have taken to long and we got 19TH place That i am vaery happy about.

Next time less "stuff" more prepping oh and alot more beer and bourbon!




oh this is what i am most proud of and it was my wifes idea and work that made it happen. LETTUCE fairways. instead of PARSELY putting greens

Lettuce Fairways

Thanks a bunch for the compliments on the boxes It was her idea because we had only practiced the putting greens She just signed up for the Brethren so when we get the two accounts same computer thing straightened out she will have to tell you how she did them. It took her about 3 1/2 hours to do all 4 boxes and 4-5 head per box. I would descrivbe it but i was busy burning ribs and chicken at the time so i'm not really sure. But She will let ya'll know soon. :-D

p.s.
I wish we knew what everyone else did this past weekend as it was prob different for most people than there norm.

Ford said:

The lettuce is amazing. I'm guessing about 2 -3 bunches perbox. A quick knife chop and done. I am going to try one tonight or tomorrow. If it works what a time saver. Looks like the chicken compressed it but the others look great.
my chicken was huge i wasnt paying attention when i trimmed them as i never had before so i trimmed them to peices i wanted to eat not pieces that fit in the box... turns out you have to put them in a box... who knew....lol
Suggestion - more trimming on those thighs and maybe a little more honey in the sauce for that nice shine. Overall however a good first try. The cooking will come it just takes practice and repetition in the comp mode.thanks for the honey tip. i mad all my own sauces and rubs for this comp thinking i would blow it away with thing nobody ever tasted. that was against all of the advice I got on here so next time i'll use what works

And take it from me, for most of us more beer and bourbon does not help scores. The beer and bourbon are not for us they are for everyone else, we dont drink that often and everyone stopped by to say hi to the new team and wow they had beer and bourbon to share and being polite :roll: i accepted. next time im making the rounds trying to help my scores lol Makes for a better party and in Troy's case a week ago at Silver Lake more Crown did still end up with a GC.

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Stoke&Smoke said:

Ford is right on! We can't taste anything looking at pics, but all 4 entries LOOK dry. Everything was very very dry the chicken and the ribs well they were:icon_sick well as i said i didnt eat them.... They all need something to shine them up a little.

The curly leaf boxes look nice, although the chicken sort of makes it all disappear, doesn't it?
the chicken peices were so huge because I trimmed them to what I thought would be a great portion size, paying no mind to the fact that they had to fit in the box and they just barly did.
I would make sure your knives are sharp, the rib trimming is very uneven. The ribs were so close to fall off the bone over done i had a very hard time cutting them with my rock.. err i mean knife. :mrgreen:

Be careful with the beer and bourbon. May make for a good time, but your food will suffer, unless you're one of those teams that has it "locked in" on auto-pilot. yea see above beer and bourbon are to help with our scores by passing out to everyone else.

Hey, you got it all turned in, and you had a good time! That's the most important thing!...good job!:-D

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Thanks a bunch everyone!

Crash said:

I have honestly never seen a lettuce box that looked that good. Great job....your wife should be commended on them.

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Lettuce fairways... Honestly I'm just a woman who really wanted her parsley putting green, and due to the ban I couldn't have it:icon_pissed. So I did the next best thing.

I had only ever practiced the "putting green" for parsley over and over. I had never put lettuce in a box ever, until this contest, which was our first. Guess I got lucky. :biggrin:I didn't lob off the top of the heads of the lettuce to set in the boxes. I had a case of lettuce to pick from, and took my time.

I will post a new thread soon with full instructions on a play by play.

So glad you guys like! :icon_smilYou're the best! I was really nervous about it too:icon_blush:.

-Sarah (Tweedle's wife)