This was my first competition but not my last! Used Blues Hog and a little bit of a sauce from my Ribs. It was a 12lb butt that I dry rubbed with a Rib rub I buy from my local Amish store and let rest in the cooler with some ice for two hours. I put it on at 12am and pulled it off just after 4pm. It cooked between 200 and 240 until the last 2 hours (wasn't quite where I wanted it) when I moved it down on my smoker where it cooked at 280. I pulled it at 197 let it set for about 10 minutes and shredded the hell out of it. We had to have 6 portions for judging so I placed each portion on a small piece of lettuce ensuring there was good bark for each judge. It was such a mad dash and my phone was near dead I didn't get the chance to snap any pictures of the meat. There were 4 classes you could enter Pulled Pork, Pork Ribs, Brisket, and Chicken (anything goes). There were 15 teams that entered 3 were pro and the rest of us here just hobbyist. The local Hyvee (grocery store chain) won Grand Champion. Prizes were 100 for each class and an extra 100 if you bought your meat from Hyvee and 200 for grand champion. The event was in Chillicothe, MO
I've got to add competitions are pretty nuts. Over night I started to think a bouncer needed to be there. One guy got punched and there were about 5 arguments that were near fights. I just stayed in my canopy and tended my smoker (not a drinker). I also had a grass fire, set fire to the wood in my storage cage, lost a glove in my fire box(quickly retrieved but it did catch on fire), and caught fire to the grease in the bottom of my smoker(no food was in it yet). I also made a couple of mistakes on my other meats I felt cost me potention Grand Champion. My chicken was on the rack with the pork and it got a little over cooked (170) making it dry. I sauced my brisket(I am not too big a fan of it so didn't know what was right) with a sweet sauce and I dried one rack of ribs out by poking a hole in the foil to see where they were. We got the judging sheets so I seen the dry ribs cost me big time half of them were highly marked and half knocked tenderness. My real mistake was not checking the 2nd rack before cutting double meat ribs. Had I known the others were dry I would have just turned in regular off 1 rack.
Last edited:
