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! 

After our first all-night KCBS competition I can safely declare ribs to be the hardest category. It's not because of the complexity of preparing them or defining their flavor profile, it's simply the timing. To get these boys ready for a 12:30 turn-in time I figured I needed to start coals at 5am. So after staying up until 1am to get the pork shoulder on, getting 2 hrs of sleep before checking on the previsouly started brisket and pork shoulders, then getting another hour and a half of sleep before waking up to start the coals for the ribs.... well, I totally didn't have the stamina to stay on top of the smoker with the ribs in it. I went back to sleep at 6:30a, woke up at 8:30a, and the smoker was cranking at 300 degrees, a good 60-80 degrees hotter than I wanted. I then realized the cooler I intended to use as a warming holder still had 30 pounds of ice in it.... excuses, excuses, excuses! The end result was "fall-off-the-bone" overcooked ribs. We placed 39th out of 40 in ribs. After all those rib tests this summer this was such a bummer! But lesson very well learned.... we need to split up duties a bit better for the next comp and have one guy manage 12-5am, and another guy manage 5-10am. Also gotta figure a better way to get six ribs in a box nicely... that loner on the side looks totally weird! 

This was our first ever turn-in at a KCBS barbecue competition! For the chicken category we opted for wings, which we knew was a risk but thought we'd try our luck by giving the judges a break from the monotony of chicken thighs. It totally didn't pay off! We came in 34th out of 40 competitors in chicken. Bert painstakingly split 2 dozen wings on saturday night, we then rubbed them with my BBQB rub base (no sugar) and let them sit in the cooler overnight. We then grill-smoked just the wing sections on the weber kettle for about 30 minutes, tossed them in a classic buffalo wing style sauce (with Frank's hot sauce of course), and arranged in two columns in a relatively clean looking turn-in box. They were crispy and tasty, but clearly not what the judges were looking for. Next comp I'll definitely try the chicken thighs I entered into the Battle of the Boros BBQ in NYC. I think they have a much better shot of scoring higher.