Sawdustguy
10-12-2005, 11:07 AM
I just wanted to share a story of blind luck from this past Grill Kings event, our first ever competition. We were there at 7:00AM Saturday morning so we had an early start and meat inspection by Murray Saltzmen. This allowed us to rub or marinate everything and put them in sucky bags and then into the cooler. My brother Gary and I started smoking our brisket and butt at about 9:00PM on Saturday Night. We inserted wireless thermometers into the brisket and pork at about 2AM and turned it over to the Gals (our wives) to tend the smokers. At about 4:00 AM they put the ribs in. My brother and I awoke at 5:00 and had some coffee with our wives and at about 7:00 one of the thermometers started buzzing. We looked and saw that the brisket was a 190* degrees! Oh chit, we really screwed up, what do we do now? We quickly wrapped the brisket in some saran wrap and tin foil, yanked some coals from the smoker until the smoker was about 140* and put the brisket back into the smoker. We kept the smoker at about 140* until about 11:00AM when we took the brisket and put it into a cooler. We measured the temperature of the brisket and it was about 160*. When it was time to get the brisket ready at 1:00PM we opened up the brisket and were delighted to see some of the most juicy meat I personally have ever seen. It had a beautiful smoke ring and after slicing pulled apart with minimum effort but did not fall apart. My brother and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Well we placed 6th, just behind Phil and crew beating out teams like Daisy May and Big Island. I thought we were done for, what a pleasant surprise.