Notes and Observations from our First BBQ comp

This weekend Hot Buttered BBQ had its first comp in Excelsior Springs, MO and boy was it fun. We made a ton of mistakes and ended up in 54th place overall out of 67 teams that turned in. What surprised me the most was the comraderie of the teams and the willingness to help out a first timer even though we were their competition. At the cooks meeting they asked for a show of hands for the first timers, and after raising my hand I had no fewer than 5 teams come up to me to offer support, and tell me where their tent was, so I could come by and ask for any help I needed. That experiance alone was enough to get us to do more comps even if we had ended up in last place.

At 5:00 in the morning I was sitting in my camping chair feeling depressed, because I had let my cooker run real hot, and had potentially ruined our brisket and pork Butt. (it was so bad that when I took it off to foil it the meat was literally on fire!!) The rest of my team was a sleep and I wasn't looking forward to telling them of my huge mistake. Then our neighbors, Pig Pen BBQ woke up and asked how I was doing. After I told him how stupid I was, he spent the next couple of minutes telling me about some of his mistakes, and then asked me a question that put it all into perspective for me. Are you having fun? Aside from feeling stupid about my mistake, I was in fact having fun!! Plus even though I screwed up, it was pretty cool to see meat on fire. After that conversation I starting feeling better. Then 6:00 rolled around and it was time for free biscuits and gravy. Nothing better than food to cheer up a fat man.

When my team woke up I told them all of my mistake and apologized for it. I thought they might be a little pissed since they all spent money on this, but to my surprise they just patted me on the back and apologized that they had not stayed up to watch the cookers.

So to sum up a long post I learned the following things:
BBQ Teams go out of their way to help eachother out!!
I freaking love BBQ Comps!!
And I have the most suportive teammates a guy could ask for!!

See you at the next comp!!!

Just Pulin' Pork said:

Big Dog thanks for sharing your story. When is your next competition? There are several local ones coming up here in Kansas City. I would highly recomend Shawnee and Mission. My only piece of advise is to take notes and keep those note to go back and look at later. Congrats on not finishing DAL. I have a feeling your addicted now and there is no going back! Nice job!

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Right now we are only signed up for the Crosspoint BBQ that is in Shawnee on Sept. 12th and 13th. My wife is due with our second child at the end of September, so we decided not to sign up for the big one in Shawnee since it is the same weekend she is due. That is one that we really want to do, but if she went into labor I would have a tough choice to make.... just kidding I would obviously go to the Hospital, as would the rest of our team, so we will miss it this year.

Bigdog said:

Nice story. Thanks for your honesty. Did you meet any of the Brethren?

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I did meet some brethren. I had previously met HoDeDo, so it was nice to see that he was right behind my tent. He also came up with a great line for me after I told him about my "fire Brisket" he simply said..."sounds like burnt ends to me". I am still freakied out that 4 teams had a lower scoring brisket than ours.

Harbormaster said:

I'm going to do my first comp next weekend. Thanks for sharing your tough times with candor and honesty.
I am really looking forward to seeing old friends made here, and making new ones. This will be my third time at this comp, but first actually competing. I have set obtainable goals so as not to disappoint myself.
Having fun is at the top of the list.

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The best advice I can give you is to have a written plan before you even get there. I had planned to do this, but was unable to, because a computer virus hit our company real bad last week and I had to work a ton of overtime. I finally wrote out something at about 9:00 Friday night, just so we had a guide, but it wasn't good enough for me.

If you have a written plan it is an awesome thing to fall back on if the going gets tough!! Good luck to you, I can't begin to describe how much fun it was... you are going to love it!!!!

Just Pulin' Pork said:

This is the first year for this comp. I am anxious to see how it turns out. I will make a point to stop by when I come out friday night.

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Everybody is welcome to stop by our tent at Crosspoints!! We are planning on cooking up some butts and chicken for friday night, so hopefully we will have something good to sample as well!!

Plowboy said:

Andy told me about the burnt brisket. Sorry to hear about that.

Saturday morning we were both out back by the cookers and looked over to see you guys pulling your ribs off of the Weber with flames coming off of them. We both went, "Ouch!", knowing what happened to the brisket.

Then we starting singing, "The ribs, the ribs, the ribs are on fire! We don't need no entry let the mutha farker burn!"

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I think I will start telling people that fire was my secret ingredient!! The only thing that didn't catch fire was the chicken....and me thankfully!! All and all it was a pretty poor showing for me, but thankfully I have no problem laughing at myself!! Plus now I am super motivated to get everything down pat!!