BBQ Contest -Gaylord Fiddlin and Brewin

The big day came for our first contest, We felt good about the items we had learned from the practice run that was only two weeks before and we had a good schedule and learned a lot about the actual cooking process as a team. Little did we know that we were not prepared to cook against the competition teams.

Items that we were ready for:
1. We had all of the items like knives, tongs, gloves, cutting boards, tables, tent, wash station, meals, drinks and etc… We didn’t have items that we had to leave the contest to retrieve.
2. We had a good schedule and everyone knew their responsibilities.
3. We had no surprises about how the contest was going to be run. Thanks to the book: Competition BBQ Secrets
Items that we weren’t ready for:
1. We really didn’t know what the products should look like during turn in
2. We struggled getting our food up to temp because our smokers weren’t as nice as other smokers.
3. How nice all the other teams are to you during competition.
4. How much fun you actually have during the event.
5. Getting a nice looking product as well as tasting good.

Use the first event as a learning experience and ask question to other teams because they will help you with suggestions. We have to give a big shout out to South Pork and Pig Smokers in Paradise for all the help.

We finished the first competition 73 out of 78 and received some scores of 9 on chicken and brisket. We didn’t get disqualified and we scored average on almost all over our products.

Here is what we found out later:
Chicken – cooked to dark, need to cook the glaze into the skin
Ribs - Have no idea – extremely tough but the meat should leave a mouth bite in the meat. Cook the glaze into the meat
Pork Butt – Good bark but needed to rest at least 1 hour
Brisket – we over cooked the brisket because it was falling apart it should have some give.

Some pictures:

How The Thillerz on the Grillerz was created summer of 2007

All,

I had worked with Robert Guisinger and Page Thompson for at least 7 years. We had attended cooking classes at Viking in Franklin over the years and had a great time. We all love to cook from gourmet to simple open fire cooking. I had noticed an Ad for a BBQ contest at the Gaylord Hotel in Nashville for last weekend in September and I guess it was around May. At the time only Page owned a smoker and it was a very small upright water smoker. We all agreed that this was something we wanted to try even thought we really had no experience in smoking meat in a real wood smoker.

So over the next couple of months, Robert and me bought barrel smokers from Academy Sports and started using them to cook butts, ribs, and brisket. Page was working on the chicken using his smoker. We researched on to cook using smokers and what a BBQ contest would be like for beginners. They had a backyard classification but we decided that if we were going then we would do all four meats (butt, ribs, brisket, and chicken).

Picture attached is my first fire in smoker box -Too hot and burned box