The weather was perfect, well for the middle of February it was perfect. Some really good teams were competing and since we changed up some of our products we wanted to know where we stood with the rest of the nuts willing to brave the cold of Illinois. Partly sunny and no snow or crazy wind, it was nice.
We were there early enough, 6:20am and set-up next to Al and family of Butt Smoke. Al had the heaters and Cambro's so we were pretty much set up to keep warm. Set-up didn't take too long and we were ready in no time.
We created a timeline as we practiced our meats at home so in theory, all we had to do was follow our timeline and we'll be able to submit four meats - sausage, chicken, ribs and pork and in that order. On site, we followed the timeline, all 23 steps. It was pretty cool checking them off as we pounded out the meats.
Sausage wasn't really thought about all that much and in the end it really hurt us. We didn't even get within the top 10 (ouch).
Chicken looked okay, we had a new process with chicken and wanted to know how well it would do against 'these guys' before we submit in a big contest and find out they were not up to par.
Ribs were under the same changes as chicken. Totally changed, untested and we weren't sure how they'd be received. Three slabs were cooked, the tenderness was very nice on all three slabs. It's not often your slabs all come out 'submittable'. We could have chosen any rib from any rack and feel confident with the taste and tenderness. Go figure, the scores for tenderness were from 5's to 9's! We also, plated differently with the ribs, appearence score, all 7's. I guess the plating wasn't good either. Very disappointing.
Pork was cooked well again. I say again because last year we submitted tenderloins in a different backyard contest and placed 1st. We cooked two tenderloins and submitted both in the box. Needless to see, it was a lot of meat. We placed 3rd this time around.
Overall, this annual cook-off in the middle of winter to support albinism is a great "ice breaker" for those that can't wait to start cooking in the su
mmer.
