Turn ins w/no garnish?

If you line the box, I highly suggest that you (the organizer) provide whatever it is
that they can line it with. It's scary what some will do. Also, some will get creative
and start decorating the box with a liner. Keep the playing field as even as possible.
Remember, you want your judges to be judging the ribs themselves on their own
merits.

FYI: MBN and other sanctioning bodies have no garnish un-lined boxes; ala.
nothing in the box but BBQ. It's normal. I actually prefer the no-garnish
comps myself.

I have done no garnish contests and typically they allow for aluminum foil under the meat on the bottom of the box

The foil allowed sanctioning body would be (is it) IBCA. If I recall, they also supply
the foil, dont they?

Lake Dogs said:

The foil allowed sanctioning body would be (is it) IBCA. If I recall, they also supply
the foil, dont they?

Click to expand...

Yes, they do.

The only reason for foil in the box would be to keep hot food from melting the foam box and sticking to it. If you think this is a concern, get a box of the single sheet food service foil and give each team one or two sheets.

The simpler you have it, the easier it'll be come judging time. Allow them to use their
own foil allows all kinds of potential craziness; things you cant even dream of, some
guy WILL dream it and it'll be in there... Either go nothing, or supply a few sheets
(as mentioned above) and say they can optionally use these and ONLY these with
no additional cutting, bending, folding, or otherwise marking the foil.

Speaking of garnish stuff, are the rules for garnish based on the sanctioning body?

thanks.

wallace

randyhowsit said:

Speaking of garnish stuff, are the rules for garnish based on the sanctioning body?

Click to expand...

Yes. As are all the rules, really. Some have common traits - others are pretty far apart. Bottom line is the sanctioning body - even if that's just an individual as it sounds like is the case here.

^^^ As different as night and day. It's all BBQ, but very different rules and categories,
etc. Probably your farthest 2 apart would be KCBS to MBN. Not much the same.

Most others are a hybrid if you will, taking what they feel is the best from each of
these and putting their own spin on it. Most dont allow garnish of any sort (KCBS
being the garnish one). Most only do blind judging (MBN doing a second round with
on-site, then a third round that's on-site as well [including the initial blind judging]).
Scoring systems are different (and this matters), as well as how they define what
is the "perfect" Q. Where KCBS would say that ribs should bite cleanly, but not pull
from the bone (bite through Q), MBN says the rib meat should pull cleanly from the
both with only a slight resistance. As a result, you'll see mostly spares cooked in
KCBS, and mostly babybacks in MBN. Pork; KCBS you'll see sliced and sauced; MBN
not nearly so much. KCBS has chicken & beef; MBN is strictly pork with whole hog
being one of their categories.

Whereas a small team of one or two people and a runner can compete effectively in
KCBS, it's almost impossible for a small team like this to compete in anything other
than just 1 category in MBN. For MBN we combine 3 KCBS/chili cooking teams and
come together as 1 team; 6 guys, plus wives and runners, etc.

Costs tend to be different as well. Everything included (travel cost, gasoline, food,
meat for the contest, entry fees, etc) we can usually compete effectively in a KCBS,
FBA, GBA, etc. cookoff within a few hours drive for less than $800. As a comparison,
we'll cook in an MBN cookoff coming up in a few weeks and I've got $900 in it already
($320 in meat alone) and we're only cooking pork shoulder and ribs; no whole hog
entry. To do all 3 we'd add in probably another $400, give or take. Thankfully this
one is close, so the travel costs are very low. But, we'll be feeding about 12 people
Friday night and Saturday and perhaps into Sunday... Havent even begun on those
costs yet...

All fun. All enjoyable. All BBQ.