Mom, look! I won some trophies! The judges at this year's Grillin' on the Bay showed us some serious barbecue love this past weekend down in Sheepheads Bay, Brooklyn. We were pretty humbled to be handed trophies for every category of the day. So Awesome!  

I love this competition for many reasons... it's just a single day (no need to bring the tent and sleeping bags), it's right here in brooklyn, it's a reasonable size, and there's always an interesting category thrown at the teams. Read on for more info and pics of the day. 

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My second KCBS barbecue competition is in the books after competing in the Harvard Fall Festival BBQ State Championship. 60 teams showed up for this one (note to self: stop entering "State Championships!"), and the competition was serious. Some of these teams are 10 people deep, with decades of experience among them. At most I have a decade of backyard grilling under my belt, so these comps are as much about learning as they are about competing. Read on for a little tour of the weekend.

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My next KCBS barbecue competition is coming up this weekend, and the past few weeks have been filled with numerous ribs and chicken tests. It's hard to think of many things better than barbecue testing: You deal with zero stress, you have all the comforts of home, the backyard smells of delicious smoke and meat, and you simply concoct, adjust, fiddle, rearrange, and otherwise tweak until you can tweak no more. It's akin to my old days of being a graphic designer, but so much better because it involves fire, smoke, and meat!

Mmmmm Riiiibbbbbbbss:

After trying a few local farms out, I've settled on using The Meathook in Williamsburg as my ribs supplier for this competition. I have to find out which pig farm my last round of slabs came from, but regardless they were outstanding. Balanced fat levels, nice uniform st louis cut (good job Sara the butcher!), and a wonderfully rich meaty flavor. I've recently switched to wild cherry wood for smoking ribs, and I'm loving the taste. Super mellow yet distinct. A really nice combination with the richness of spare ribs. I'm still on the fence about going with my favorite vinegar-heavy sauce or using my latest sweet/tomato sauce. I'm guessing the judges will like the sweeter one better... so thinking it's worth a shot.

Test That Chicken:

I've spent a lot of time on chicken variations. Too much time really. I've brined. I've braised in butter. I've removed skin, scraped all the fat off then stuck it back on. I've deboned. I've rubbed under skin and on skin. I've used cherry wood. I've used apple wood. I've used oak. What have I learned? A shitload, most notably that barbecued chicken rocks. But here's my final takeaway: I plan to trim uniformly, remove skins, brine, scrape fat from skins, keep meat on the bone, season under skin, wrap skin back on, season on top of skin, pierce a few holes in skin, indirect grill on the kettle with drip pans and cherry wood, crisp skin-side down at the very end, and sauce off the grill. Woohoo! 

Our first KCBS competition is officially in the books. My conclusion? It's unbelievable so many teams pack up their lives for 2-day long barbecue festivals, 5-10 times a year, and still have families that love them. That said, the MGCB competition was an incredible time and I really loved every aspect of the event: Talkin' Que with lifetime veterans; being welcomed as newbies by the KCBS organizers; stoking fires through the wee hours of the morning; firing and withstanding one-liners for a constant 36 hours; and most importantly essentially living in meat, bbq rub, smoke and grease for those same 36 hours. Read on for more details...

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Folks say brisket is one of the hardest pieces of meat to barbecue well... I've only done a full-packer once before this competition and I have to say I'm totally into smoking brisket! I trimmed this 14 pounder at 8pm on saturday night, removing about 2 pounds of fat. I then coated it with my BBQB rub in a 2 parts rub to 1 part granulated brown sugar ratio. The brisket went on the WSM18 at 10pm, and came off at 9:30am on Sunday having already passed my 190 target temp. I checked the WSM temps at 1am, 3 am, 5 am, and 8:30am.... always hovering around 210-230. Gotta love that minion method of lighting coals! I should have checked meat temps earlier because when I finally took it the flat was at 200-205 (bummer), but the point was at 185-190 (woohoo!). So we decided to only serve the point, and sliced it in long slices like one usually reserves for the flat. We dipped each slice quickly in the cider/drippings from the smoker to keep things hot and moist. We scored 24th out of 40 competitors in brisket, and it's the proudest place of the competition for me. I figure I'll try an injection for our next comp, and I'd like to increase the salt-levels in the rub... and Bert had a killer suggestion of adding a few jalapenos or chipotles to the water pan throughout the cook to boost the flavor in that drippings baste. But even with all those revisions in mind, I'm super excited we did this well in brisket. Go Brisket! 

Pork shoulder was our best score of the weekend, coming in at 20th of 40 competitors in the pork category. A few KCBS reps were really enthusastic about this score for our first KCBS competition, and not knowing that much about it all I'll take their enthusiasm as good news! I completely planned to hand-pull this shoulder like I've done dozens of times for backyard barebcues, but as I started to separate the pieces, we noticed there were a few gorgeous sections of juicy meat with a rich bark on them.... after a little debate we decided it was best to slice them into large-ish chucks instead. We squirted them with a few drops of my carolina red vinegar sauce, and it turns out we're onto something here! The shoulder went on the WSM at 1am, and came off at about 10:30a. Temp readings were from 180-190, and the WSM18 stayed at 210-230 the whole time. I've never carved a shoulder like this, and clearly I need to work on my tecnique a bit.... but I'm super excited we scored as well as we did in pork. Go Pork!