for you shall judge my boxes

[Rick's Tropical Delight]

here's my turn-ins for the ohio vet bbq comp. my first comp so be gentle


655 777 666 999 999 889
7th


886 788 767 786 988 979
13th


766 877 899 668 767 868
26th


755 767 876 767 765 766
36th

[smoke showin']

I would be proud if those were my first boxes .Somebody has paid attention !!

[Dale P]

Rick, congrats on the call and thanks for the boat eggs. That really satisfied a hunger/hangover.

I give you all 9s bro!

[Ron_L]

Rick... Nice looking grub as usual! Here are my scores and comments...

I didn't look a your scores before making these comments.

chicken - 8, Would have been a 9 but the chicken looks dark. That may be the picture, so use your judgment. the pieces are all uniform, the layout is nice, and it makes me want to grab a piece. Some minor things... Try to build up the parsley base a little bit to bring the chicken up in the box a little. It will help to highlight the meat. Also, the thigh in the upper right hand corner has a "nose" sticking out of it on it's upper right corner. Take some kitchen shears and snip that off and touch up that spot with sauce.

Ribs - 8, The ribs look great! It's the little things that would kick that up to a 9. First, try to take all of the ribs from a single slab. Personally i think it makes a nice presentation. I have heard some judges who also look at that as a measure of your cooking ability (the assumption is that if you are taking ribs from different slabs then maybe you couldn't cook one whole slab that was good enough. I don't buy that, but it just looks nicer). also, I don't like to leave the sides of the ribs showing. Your look juicy in the picture, but what did they look like 8-10 minutes later when the judges finally saw them? They probably looked dry. Finally, look at the top of the two ribs on the left side. The left most has a bit of loose meat on top. Remove that. The next one has a crack in the bark. Touch that up with a little sauce so it isn't as noticeable.

Pork - 7 or 8, It looks good, but not great. I think more bark pieces would have made it better and broken up he large pink area in the upper left.

Brisket - 7 or 8, probably 8. The meat looks nice and juicy, he bark looks nice, the slices are uniform. But, some of the slices have smears of sauce near the top edge that take away from the appearance. Also the front slice has a couple of bits of loose meat or bark tha catch they eye.

Overall great job! I've said this before in these threads, my comments are after looking at the box for a longer time han I would have at a competition. Plus, here Ihave the luxury of going back and looking multiple times. In a real judging situation I probably wouldn't notice all of the minor things.

[Sledneck]

Looks good. Nice 13th place ribs....

[rookiedad]

i think your stuff looks great however i would get away from the dioganal placing, because it leaves alot of empty space in the corners. square placement in a square box leaves less garnish showing so you can concentrate on a nice even boarder of garnish all the way around. also, you might try experementing with the green leaf lettuce. i find that you can get that more even in placement than parsley. looks great though!

[MilitantSquatter]

Chicken - a little dark but looks great. I'd give an 8

Ribs - looks tasty but I'd clean up/smooth out the sides and go with 8 ribs (4 on top on 4). I'd give this a 7

Pork - I don't like the few scattered chunks on top of the minced bed of pork. Make the consistency more even. I'd give this a 6-7

Brisket - nice bark. Try to even out the slices as far as thickness. I'd give this a 6-7

[Solidkick]

Very nice for your 1st contest......good suggestions above so not much to add otherwise......

[U2CANQUE]

Nice comments, as said, easy to look and relook at boxes, agree with the try to get all from same (though at times difficult)....first attempt, AWESOME....congrats on call for chicken! You did a great job of slicing brisket, keeping your bark intact...maybe consider some ends in there is going from corner to corner, but, they do look great.

Good first go at it.......practice practice practice, even if just to do a weekend....take pics, think of a menu picture, what would make it go from wow, that looks good, to Oh WOW, I have to try this dish....2-3 second glance.......but, overall, good presentations

[Jeff_in_KC]

Look really good for your first contest, Rick. MUCH better than my first boxes. Here's a few observations...

Chicken - Try to get the skins more around the ends like the middle and lower pieces on the left. Also, my suggestion is to go a little lighter on the sauce and try to make it a smooth glaze over the pieces. It APPEARS sort of thick in places and thinner in others. I'd score it a 7.

Ribs - Did you use ribs from different slabs on this? Personally, I'm not a fan of separating the ribs to see each side, mainly because it opens up the possibility of having happen what happened on yours: you got stray sauce smeared on the sides. Also, on the second rib from the left, there is a crack where you see meat and not sauce or bark... fill that in with sauce. Make your sauce smoother looking like I suggested on the chicken. 7 there as well.

Pork - Pork is a difficult one because so many people place a large pile of pulled pork in the middle and call it good. It's hard to really stand out to a judge if you don't do something a bit different. Around KC, sliced pork does really well. Could be different in your area. I'd experiment with sliced as well but back to THIS box - I'd suggest not shredding it so much and doing more chunks if anything... and you need a lot more bark showing. But don't just use any bark. While we know tougher bark is good eats, judges will likely ding you if you serve harder bark. Pick through your butt (good thing this isn't wood pile!!) and find chunks (again... avoid wood pile!) with softer tasty bark backed by nice pink smoke color and use that. Avoid the white meat and gray meat. 7 to an 8.

Brisket - Looks nice but I also don't care for angled meat. If you had to due to length of slices, fill in in front AND behind with nice lightly sauced TENDER burnt ends to make the box full. And wipe off the sauce smear on the slices. GREAT looking bark there. Nice even slices too. This is a 7 to me. If you'd filled the box with nice looking burnt ends, I'd damned near give it a 9.

[Bbq Bubba]

For first time out, boxes look awesome Rick!!

Congrats on the walk, hope somebody got a pic of that!

I do have a comment about the scoring you received on your chicken..

655 777 666 999 999 889
7th

3 judges and 3 clueless farken idiots???

[Rick's Tropical Delight]

great comments guys, thanks...

here's what i did:

butts on a large, brisket on a large, then pull butts in the morning and put on ribs on that large, then chicken on the medium.

i thought the chicken was too dark also, i was going for bite through skin. i tried one too small piece and the entire skin came off, so with being too dark, i though it was my worst entry. great flavor though, and my friends liked the reject pieces.

ribs from two slabs because the fire was hotter on one side of the egg and kinda overcooked a small slab. not sure why i did the diagonal layout. i was kinda loopy at that point with 1.5 hours of sleep
i also tore up a bunch of the ribs trying to cut them so i had to go with the best six.

pork... good comments and i'll try them all. my framily and friends said it tasted great (but then again, it was free to them )

brisket, i think i cleaned off the two spots on the front slice after the photo. everything was blurry to me at this point. i had to angle because the slices were too long. maybe trim to fit the box prior to smoking

just a call in chicken, bubba, but i almost fell over when i heard it. i was wondering about those chicken scores too. maybe some pieces just weren't as good.

[watg?]

"i also tore up a bunch of the ribs trying to cut them so i had to go with the best six."



I like an electric knife for slicing ribs, I feel its easier to make cuts without damage, just my opinion.

[Rick's Tropical Delight]

Originally Posted by watg?

I like an electric knife for slicing ribs, I feel its easier to make cuts without damage, just my opinion.

i'll try that next time. i also made a few shiners by cutting too close to the bone

[The Pigman]

Rick thanks for breakfast and wanted to stop over but seen you were taking guitar lessons...........LOL