Friday started out a little overcast, but all was good. Got home from work early, started packing up the truck, made the au jus and the BBQ sauce for the brisket and was running around like crazy people. We also had to pick up our new banner, so Pitmaster Todd ran over to the printers to get it while I was getting everything else finished.
I think our banner turned out great:
Anyway, we were running late so we got to the BBQ cookoff with seconds to spare before the cooks meeting. After the meeting we were given our meat (1 *very* large brisket!!) and started getting set up so we can prep the brisket.
About this time - it started to rain. We knew it was going to rain, but what we *didn't* expect was the mini-typhoon that was going to hit. We were DRENCHED! They had to cancel Friday evenings festivities (live band, vendors, selling to the public, etc) because of the rain. Luckily we were (somewhat) prepared and brought along side walls for the canopy and put two of them on the sides - the front was blocked by the truck and the back wall was open to give us access to the smoker.
Did I mentioned we were DRENCHED??!! It was cold, it was rainy, and it was miserable. Luckily we had some great, funny guys next to us that has us pretty entertained all night. We were able to catch a quick catnap but again, we needed to watch the smoker and tend to the meat, so sleeping wasn't going to be top of the priority list.
Our meat got done WAY early - 7am - and turn in time wasn't until noon, so we wrapped it up and placed it in an empty cooler with towels to keep it warm. What we didn't realize is that the meat would keep cooking....
Anyway, its still raining cats and dogs (on a side note - who came up with that saying anyway? lol) and we were still drenched. We were told that the People's Choice and food sales were now cancelled because of the rain, and instead we were going to just have a big lunch inside the main building with all the teams and taste everyone's brisket.
Anyway at 10:30am we put the meat back on the smoker to warm it back up then took it off at 11:30 to slice it. We noticed it was VERY VERY tender (read: it was falling apart) so was very hard to slice:
OMG the flavor was SOOO good, it was just way overdone.
Here's our turn-in box; we did a little of everything - slices, shredded and cubed:
After turn in, we ate some lunch, chatted with other BBQ-ers and some judges and started packing up when we were called back in for the results.
Unfortunately we came in 13th out of 22. We were a bit disappointed (well, ok, a *lot* disappointed) but what can you do? We congratulated some of the other teams, packed up our stuff and went home. I crashed for 14 hours, was up for a couple of hours, then crashed for another 4 hours, and was pretty much dragging the rest of the day with a monster migraine. Sunday I looked like death LOL
We also got the judges comments back Sunday afternoon:
Scores are on a scale of 1-10, and they judge based on Appearance, Tenderness and Taste. Keep in mind its all subjective, of course, but after seeing the breakdown and comments we now know what we did wrong and will make the necessary adjustments:- We smoked it on too high of a heat (next time we will use a lower temp)
- We cooked it too long (we will do better with time management so it won't be overcooked next time)
- We are NOT changing the au jus we used - for the life of us, we can't figure out why Judge #2 didn't like the taste but the other judges did. In fact we offered samples to many of our BBQ neighbors and all of them raved. Eh....to each their own
- We will mak sure we fill the box a lot fuller next time - ours looked a little skimpy, in hindsight
Vanessa :)
