Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Award winning brisket!!!


I love all things edible. I work as a Pastry Chef which is fantiastically fun, but also means I can get pretty sick of eating and making sweet things. To sort of counter balance all of this sugar, I am on a competitive barbecue and grilling team.  What started as a fun idea to hang out with friends (and get free beer) has turned into a borderline obsession for my boyfriend!  Which is why we drove 5 hours each way for a one day Kansas City Barbecue Society competition.

It was our second competition as a team (although we helped another team, Meat at Slim's, out at the Maine State competition in August).  We've learned so much since we started our BBQ team.  At our first competition, Scott and I were in charge of the brisket.  Perhaps because of that, it has a special spot in our heart. 

This was a tough competition.  The weather forecast had been looming over us all week.  And it delivered.  The rain and wind over night were insane.  And the thing about BBQ is that although the competition is Sunday, the preparations and cooking start Saturday night.  I have very little to do with the cooking.  My job tends to be more on the sauce and rub making and the presentation of our final product.  Scott was up every hour in the rain to check our meats progress.  I am still not sure how he did it. 





It was a long night.  We were both soaked for most of it.  But Sunday was a sunny day, and it was a great day.  We got all our competition boxes in on time and felt confident this was our best showing.  (Not hard- our first competition we were average at best)

Prior to the KCBS results being announced there was a small "celebrity judging" of ribs and chicken.  We were thrilled to win 1st place in chicken.  As a team we had never won anything!  It was a thrill.  We won $100 off next years entry fee.  We will be back! 

KCBS always announces the top ten teams in each of the categories- chicken, ribs, pulled pork and brisket.  With our celebrity judge win, I felt pretty confident we would at least make the top ten of KCBS in Chicken.  We didn't.  In fact our chicken was judged by the official judges to be 37th out of 45 teams.  Just goes to show that "regular people" and KCBS aren't looking for the same thing in the world of chicken...

We managed to pull a solid 20th in ribs, a lowly 34 in pulled pork (often considered the toughest category), and- drum roll please- a thrilling 4th place in Brisket.  We won $74 and a medal.  We officially have award winning brisket!

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