New Paltz aka Hudson Valley Ribfest

Well I picked the wrong time to start blogging again. Our results in New Paltz were less than steller, we didn't get a call all weekend in the Grilling Contest or the BBQ Contest. We ended up 16th overall in the grilling and 18th overall in the barbecue. I thought all of our food was good this weekend but the judges just didn't agree. We spent a few minutes behind the trailer crying about it and then we did the Hampster Dance to cheer ourselves up.

I'm headed to New Holland Pennsylvania this weekend to cook in the New Holland Summerfest. I've had some success there in the past but didn't do great last year. I'm not changing a thing so we'll see what happens this weekend. Wish us luck.

Heading to New Paltz NY this weekend

Well it's been a pretty successful season so far. In New Hampshire we won both the grilling and barbecue contests and a couple of weeks ago we won the bbq contest at the Harpoon Brewery. Harpoon is one of those special events. We vend and have a lot of friends and family around so its a crazy weekend and winning is just icing on the cake.

This weekend is New Paltz. We've done pretty well there the past few years and it's a great family friendly event. There's a public swimming pool next door with showers which I wish all contests had. Saturday we'll be grilling fish, steak, sausage and pork chops. Sunday is the 4 KCBS categories and an apple category. Last year we did cinnamon apple jello shots for the apple entry. They didn't do great but I think Doug had a blast making them. If your in the New Paltz area this weekend stop by the Ulster County Fairgrounds and say hi.

Peter's Pond

We competed at the Peter's Pond Rib and Brisket festival in Cape Cod this weekend. We took 1st Chicken (no it's not a mistake), 6th ribs, 1st pork and 1st brisket. Oh and we were the Grand Champions !

Great Pork BBQlossal...Des Moines Iowa

It was hot, it was windy and it was a lot of fun. The BBQlossal is a unique contest in that all of the categories are pork. Ribs, Loin, Whole Hog and Shoulder. We got a call for 8th place Ribs and 5th place loin and ended up 7th overall out of 61 teams.

A little Update

The bbq season has started off a little slow but it's about to kick into high gear. I'm headed to the Great Pork BBQlossal in Des Moines Iowa this weekend to cook under the team name of Hawgeyes Nation. I'll be teaming up with Scottie Johnson of CancersucksChicago.com and Mike Tucker of Hawgeyesbbq.com. After that we have the Peter's Pond Rib and brisket festival in Cape Cod, The Rotary Ribfest in Merrimack NH, a rib cookoff at Jakes in Waltham, a bbq class in Warminster PA, a contest and bbq class in Lake Placid New York and then a contest in New Jersey. Things are about to get very, very busy ! I'll try to post after each event but no Promises....

Making Pastrami from Commercial Corned Beef

I'm making my first attempt at pastrami today. I'm using store bought corned beef that I've been soaking in water for a couple of days to remove some of the salt. I bought points because they were half the price of the flats and I like the point on a brisket better anyway. I rubbed each corned beef with 2 tablespoons cracked black pepper, 1 tablespoon cracked white pepper, 1 tablespoon cracked coriander seeds, 1 tablespoon coarsely ground freeze dried garlic, 1 tablespoon paprika for color and 1 teaspoon onion powder. If you've ever wondered what makes pastrami uniquely pastrami it's definitely the coriander. It has a very pastrami like smell.I'm cooking on the FE100. Cooked the first 2 hours on smoke setting which fluctuates between 160 and 180 on my cooker. Just turned it up to 240. That is all...
The picture above is the Pastrami after 4 hours in the cooker. It's starting to look pretty tasty !!
Six hours 151 degrees and humming along.After 8 hours the Pastrami was 175 Degrees. I removed it from the smoker let it cool and refrigerated overnight. On Easter Morning I steamed the brisket for 3 hours to complete the process. The end product was moist, tender and very flavorful. This was my first try at making Pastrami and other than pressing the rub into the meat more so it will adhere better I can't really think of any way to improve it.

Cost Update

Entry Fee $135
2 bone in pork butts 20.65 lbs @ $1.19/lb = $24.57
2 All Natural briskets 18.95 lbs @ $2.95/lb= $55.90

We still have to purchase ribs and chicken.

About the briskets. I'm sure that price seems high and the weight low but it's an all natural grass fed product that has worked very well for us.

About the pork. Boneless butts are going for .90 some odd cents but we definately prefer the bone in variety. You would think bone in would be cheaper but they're not. Go figure.

Grand total so far $215.47. We still have a lot of shopping to do and this doesn't include rubs, sauces, injections, marinades, charcoal and wood. We have sponsors for several of those items but if your planning to get into competition bbq you'll have to purchase them.

Let's get this season started !!

Well we're ready to start off the new bbq season here in good old New England. It's currently 43 degrees outside and the weekend forecast calls for rain and snow with a low of 24. I feel bad for anyone that doesn't have an insulated pit, our Backwoods should do just fine in this weather.

I thought I might try to track our expenses a little better this year and share some of those figures with you. The entry fee for this contest is $135 dollars. The contest was originally supposed to take place in Hancock MA which is 160 miles from my house but it's been moved to Maynard MA which is less than 30 miles. My truck gets about 9 miles to the gallon towing my trailer so that's roughly $40 dollars of fuel savings. We were going to get 3 hotel rooms in Hancock which were $97 each so that's another savings of $291 dollars. This move of venue has saved us a bunch of money.

Well with all that savings I started thinking about the possible 20 degree temps and ordered a propane heater online. It was only $60 dollars and it lasts 6 hours on 1lb of propane. It was a no brainer to me, I just hope it gets here before the contest.
I'll let you know what our meat costs are when I find out. Now I just have to remember how to cook competition bbq.

Edit: 10 seconds after hitting submit for this post I got an email saying the heater has been shipped. Oh boy oh boy. That's good news.

This is going to be fun

Now I can't wait for the bbq season to start. This blog is going to be active when it does. I love modern technology!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

How about a picture?

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Test post

Just testing to see if I can post to this blog from my blackberry.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Images from the Jack

Interesting Conversation

Well we're sitting here at the Nashville airport waiting for Sully from the Lunchmeat bbq team. He's hitching a ride with us to Lynchburg, the rest of his team are driving. I'm sitting here minding my own business surfing the web and the conversation turns to Glory Holes. I don't know why ? This group I'm with is a little out there but I didn't know they were that far out there ! But I guess it beats talking about the weather. We're going to go try a local bbq chain called Bar-B-Cutie. Hopefully it's glory hole free. I'll check in later.

Arrrrgh the FLU

We're supposed to leave tomorrow at 6:00 am for Lynchburg Tennessee to compete in the Jack Daniels Invitational but instead of getting ready I'm lying in bed fighting the FLU. My throat is killing me but my fever has finally broke so hopefully I'm on the mend.

The Royal Invitational Prep Day

We lounged around the hotel until 11:00am and then headed over to the Kemper Arena to get our site set up and our meat inspected. When I woke up I had a craving for chicken fried steak(Steve Steaks) and I put Carlotta in charge of finding someplace that had it. She hit the jackpot ! Papa Lew's Soul Delicious had some great chicken fried steak and fried okra. Carlotta and Carmen hit the Soul food buffet that included fried chicken, greens, chicken necks and other assorted goodies. On the way out we got a big hug from the restaurant owner.

We got a site big enough to park the truck on. I'm glad we did because the truck served as a barrier to one side of the site as well as the porta John. If you've never been to the Royal then you don't know how important it is to have your site blocked in on all sides and your Porta John hidden from the public. If you don't then 30,000 spectators will be using your site as a shortcut and the Porta John will last about 2 hours before the stink gets so bad you want to vacate the area.

I was impressed this year with the availability of Ice and Water, two things that have been an issue at the Royal in the past. There were so many people riding around on carts with ice asking if you needed it that it almost became annoying. The meat inspectors were also easy to contact and we were inspected and ready to go in no time.

Now it was time to trim the meat. This is something I usually drag my feet on, but I was motivated by the fact I wanted to visit with all my friends who were also at the Royal. People from sea to shining sea were in attendance and that's one of the things that makes the Royal so special. While I was busy trimming Jorge from the BBQ Brethren stopped by and gave me some great smoked sausages from his home state of Texas. After trimming the meat I had to cook some chocolate chip cookies and the sausages Jorge gave me for a party we were attending.

At 7:00pm The Slabs hosted a party for members of The BBQ Forum an internet forum where many of the top teams in the KCBS hang out and share their knowledge. It was a potluck and there was lots of great food to munch on, from bbq pizza to tasty dips and deserts. There was also an Ice Luge and a huge Margarita machine set up. The Slabs gave away door prizes that were donated from forum members and advertisers. It was a lot of fun to see old friends from the forum and to meet some new ones.

Travel to the Royal

The trip to the Royal was fairly uneventful. Charlie and Carlotta's ride to the airport never showed up so they had to drive themselves and put their jeep in the airport parking garage. They had Pat pick it up so they didn't have to pay the $48 dollars a day. At the curbside check in I dropped one of the coolers, knocked my ice coffee on my shoe and spilled 3 briskets out into the street. The Briskets were in cryovac and I had a change of socks so it wasn't really a big deal. We checked in the coolers with no problem and 5 hours later we arrived in Kansas City where our ride was waiting for is.

Steph from The Slabs took us to dinner at Los Corrals. This place has great Margaritas and Mexican food. I had the carne asada and it was excellent. It seems every time I'm around the Slabs I'm eating or cooking some kind of steak so Kyle has nicknamed me Steve Steaks. From there we went to Sams Club to buy our ribs, chicken, Jack and Tequila then picked up our trailer and dropped it off at the contest site. There were a lot of teams already set up by the time we got there but our space was a pull through so it was easy to get in. We did some visiting and I ended up drinking a little more than I planned. Man was I feeling it. We didn't get to the hotel until after 11:00 and I was wiped out.

Our Royal Results

Invitational Results:

44 Chicken
34 Ribs
2nd Pork (tied first place)
67 Brisket

20 Overall

Open Results:

283 Chicken
51 Ribs
32 Pork
71 Brisket

48 Overall

American Royal Time !

This is the weekend of the American Royal Barbecue competition in Kansas City MO, aka the Super Bowl of Barbecue. On Friday night we will start coking for the Invitational event that will be judged on Saturday. To qualify for this event teams had to have won a Grand Championship sometime during the year. It's a battle of Champions. Last year we got 3 top 15 calls and placed 19th overall. Our brisket tanked and took us out of contention.

On Saturday night we will cook for the open contest. Last year there were 475 teams competing in the open and we placed 4th overall ! The odds of doing that well again are against us but we're gonna give it all we have and let the cards fall where they may.

Our trailer and gear are already in Kansas City so we are all flying in for this contest. We're bringing two coolers full of meat on the plane with us (we hope). Back in 1998 we did the same thing but post 9/11 things are a little more complicated. Wish us luck folks.

Pine Bluff Pictures

The agony of De Feet....

Yes de feet not defeat. We didn't win but we did respectable. 10th place out of 78 teams some of them the top teams in the country. But my feet are killing me. It was a long walk to the awards ceremony and it seemed like a longer walk back to the site.

We placed 39th in chicken...not good, 18th in ribs, 16th in pork..one away from getting a call and 19th in brisket. Like I said respectable. Would we do it again ? Ummm I don't know ask me next weekend and I'm sure the answer will be yes. We're leaving all our equipment in Kansas City and flying home and we'll be back for the Royal.