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I lied

Ok - OK. I know I said that my next post would be about the Grill Kings 2005. Well, it's not. Tomorrow I'm heading out to New Paltz to compete at the Hudson Valley Rib Fest and I just don't have time to write.

But I did want to post some pictures from Asbury Park - Guitarbeque 2005 before I got bogged down with New Paltz information. I'm going to try real hard to take notes and to take more pictures on this trip. Enjoy.

Here's a picture of the ribs we submitted. Notice that they're not on their sides this time.




Here's the pulled pork as submitted in New Jersey. It's the same recipe as the pulled pork we submitted at Grill Kings. In New Jersey - well they didn't like it.




And presenting the second place brisket. Not a bad showing from brisket that we thought was terrible. The meat was dry, but still tender and was falling apart when we sliced it. Notice how thick those slices are.




For some reason, I don't have any pictures of the chicken we turned in. It seems that one entry gets missed at every contest. Oh well, let's see what happens in New Paltz.

Grill Kings 2005 - The Inside Story

I promised you guys a post about the experience of competing at Grill Kings this year. I best get started; it's been a while, I cooked in New Jersey since and have another contest coming up this weekend in Highland, NY.

The Grill Kings 2005 was moved to Heckscher State Park in East Islip from its traditional home in Eisenhower Park, East Meadow. On paper, this was a great idea. Heckscher Park is a state park which adjoins the Great South Bay. It has beaches, campgrounds, lots of parking, fields, and trees. Best of all it's maintained by the state, so it's clean and safe. It's also huge! Crowds would not be an issue.

But, apparently the caretakers of Heckscher, didn't want us there. Let's just say that they did everything possible to make the contest fail. From giving Dean a hard time as he tired to mark out the cooking spaces, to charging every competitor to park ($8 a day), to turning off the water at night. Thanks guys.

Even against all of this, Dean puts together a good event. He had some really big names this year. We were up against Dr. BBQ aka Ray Lampe, Adam Perry Lang from Daisy May's BBQ, Dirty Dick and the Legless Wonders and Philly Pigs; all big names in the BBQ world.

Jerry and Linda Mullane were the KCBS reps and any contest they rep is one of the best. They are two of the nicest people I've met and they really know how to keep things organized. Jerry also ran my judging class when I got certified, so maybe I'm biased, but they are great reps. Just ask any of the other teams out there.

This contest would be a first for us as we agreed to cook in the open competition on Saturday. An open competition is a competition is created by the organizer of the event with his or her own rules. This year the categories were Pork Chop, Sauce and Chicken Wings. A lot of rookie teams get their start in the open contests as the rules are much more lax than at the KCBS sanctioned events.

You can see our entries in previous posts. I enjoyed the open contest. It allowed us to be more creative than usual and to play around more with flavors and presentations. Unfortunately, we must have played too much because we didn't take a single category. The closest we came was in sauce with a fourth place.

Greg, also known as Parrothead on the BBQ-Brethren, made the sauce and asked me to taste it just prior to turn in. I stuck my finger in and quickly proclaimed, "Tastes just like KC Masterpiece." Greg said, "That's good enough for me." And in it went. My gut feeling was that we'd do great with this sauce. KC Masterpiece is very popular on Long Island.

For the pork chop competition we made three different versions of stuffed pork chops. I made a stuffing of apples, smoked cheddar cheese and onions. It was based on a recipe for stuffed pork chops with apple slaw in Bon Appetit magazine that month.

I took a lot or ribbing from the guys about this. But I get a lot of inspiration for my recipes from published recipes. I look at recipes and think about how I can adapt them to my needs and tastes. I've never followed a recipe in my life. I don't measure, at least not individual ingredients. I measure ingredients in comparison with each other. If I put in a fist sized tomato, well maybe I’ll add about a handful of parsley. It's one of the reasons I don't like to bake; baking is much too precise for me.

Phil made pork chops that were stuffed with apples, nectarines and candied cherries. Some of the cherries were soaked in vodka which added to their flavor. There was another version of the chops cooked, but I can't remember what we did. We tasted all three and it was decided to enter Phil's version. Honestly, I didn't particularly care for it. It was good, but candied fruits and vodka soaked maraschino cherries are not my favorite. I personally liked mine best, go figure, but I thought that I had too heavy a hand with the bourbon to be a winner.

For the chicken wings we entered a recipe that took Phil and Greg to first place at last year's event. It tanked this year. Oh well, that's part of the game.

Careful readers of this blog will remember that Phil had an article about him and the BBQ-Brethren published in NY Newsday a few days before the event. Well, this made him a star. People coming through the contest were asking to meet him and crowded our tent. This made it very difficult to cook. For some strange reason, a lot of people there thought I was Phil. Apparently we look alike. Personally, I don't see it except that we both have the same hairline. All of these visitors distracted us for much of the afternoon and evening. We weren't on our game and I think our results showed it. Crowd control is much more important than I ever realized.

That night and afternoon I really didn’t feel part of the team. We weren’t communicating. I almost walked away. Phil was distracted and not paying attention to the tasks at hand. He was enjoying his moment of fame and I can’t blame him. We were bombarded by people, all well meaning, but they kept us from doing our work. Too many people had opinions about what we were doing and too much time was spent listening and rationalizing. This part of the contest was definitely a low point for me in my brief contest going experience. But, things picked up as the people went home for the evening.

In my next post, I'll talk about the KCBS sanctioned part of the contest, what happens when you get a bunch of drunken BBQ cooks together in the middle of the night, and what I learned to do differently in the next contest.

On another topic, please welcome The BBQ Report to my list of BBQ links. It's a great site, one you'll probably spend as much time on as I do. Hey, I think they may have nabbed one of my pictures for their report on firewood. Enjoy!

Grill Kings 2005 Scores

I'm going to concentrate on the Grill Kings competetion for the next few posts. I'll try to relate what happened, where and why. Hopefully, you will find it interesting.

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: I'VE REMOVED ALL SCORES EXCEPT OUR OWN. IF YOU"D LIKE TO SEE THE COMPLETE SCORES, PLEASE GO HERE. IF WE DIDN'T PLACE I LEFT THE TOP THREE TEAMS SCORES.

Posted below are the overall scores for the Grill Kings 2005 KCBS Sanctioned NYS Championship

1st - Bonesmokers - 650.2854
2nd - Dirty Dick & The Legless - 630.8570
3rd - Philly Pigs - 626.2836
4th - BBQ-Brethren - 625.1430

Posted below are the category scores for the 2005 KCBS Sanctioned NYS Championship

Chicken

1st - MMMM BBQ - 160.0004
2nd - Bonesmokers - 158.2860
3rd - I like Smoke-n-Lightning - 158.2858

Pork Ribs

1st - Philly Pigs - 172.0000
2nd - Sir Sauce Alot - 167.4284
3rd - Bare Bones BBQ - 163.4286

Pork

1st - BBQ-Brethren - 166.2856
2nd - Bonesmokers - 162.8568
3rd - B B BBQ - 160.5714

Brisket

1st - Dirty Dick & The Legless - 172.571
2nd - Bonesmokers - 171.4284
3rd - Burke's Blazin Bar-B-Que - 169.7142
4th - Poppa Ricks - 165.1426
5th - BBQ-Brethren - 163.4286

Posted below are the category scores for the 2005 Grill Kings Open


Chicken Wings

1st - Sparkys Texas BBQ - 511
2nd - Poppa Ricks - 489*
3rd - The Dusk to Dawn - 489*

Sauce

1st - Sparkys Texas BBQ - 482
2nd - Poppa Ricks - 469
3rd - Daisy Mays BBQ - 467
4th - BBQ-Brethren/Brothers in Smoke - 466

Pork

1st - Daisy Mays BBQ - 511*
2nd - Philly Pigs - 511*
3rd - Dirty Dick & The Legless - 492
4th - Sibling Rivalry - 490
5th - Long Island Porkers - 478
6th - Big Chief BBQ - 477
7th - Big Papa's Barbecue & the Smokettes - 464
8th - Big Daddy's BBQ Pit Crew - 459
9th - Pit Posse - 456
10th - BBQ-Brethren/Brothers in Smoke - 450

* Lowest score dropped to break tie

Guitarbeque 2005

Here we are accepting our two throphies at Guitarbeque 2005. We took 2nd place Chicken and 2nd place Brisket. The BBQ-Brethren/Brothers In Smoke team came in 3rd place overall, missing 1st place by 1.5 points!

Left to right, that's me, Phil, Steve and Serge. Four people is the perfect size team. Anymore then that and you're tripping over each other.

Open - BBQ Sauce - GrillKings 2005

Sauce. Here's the fourth place sauce entry. The problem with sauce, at least for me, is that I feel that sauce should compliment the meat. I've had and made sauces that taste awful right out of the bottle or pot. But brush the sauce on your meat and carmalize over the fire and they take on a whole new life. Notice that we're getting wilder with the presentation. Apple slices wrapped in cheddar cheese with a bed of mixed nuts. Wild!

Open - Chicken Wings - GrillKings 2005

Again, no rules except it had to be chicken wings. This was the first entry turned in so we were more conservative with our garnish than we would be in later boxes. It looked very nice. Very colorful and appetizing.

Open - Pork Chops - GrillKings 2005

Here's our entry for the "open" pork chop contest. An open contest allows the contest organizer to set the rules of the competition. In this case, the only requirement was that we cook pork chops. Everything else was up to us. We stuffed the boneless loin chops with cherries, nectarines, pineapples and all sorts of fresh and candied fruits. For garnish, we were allowed to use anything we wanted, as long as it was edible. I think we went over board on this one, but we still managed to take fourth place.

Ribs Box- GrillKings 2005

Here's a poor picture of the ribs getting a final glazing right before turn in. I personally like seeing the ribs on their sides for presentation, but some of the BBQ Guru's say that presenting them this way allows the meat to dry out more quickly.

Pork Box - GrillKings2005

Here's our First Place Pulled Pork. We didn't have much bark on the pork, so if you look carefully, you'll be able to just pick up some of the dark bark meat around the edges of the box. This was a new recipe for the pork and worked out real well!

Chicken Box - GrillKings 2005

This is the chicken we turned in for The GrillKings in East Islip. We cooked 6 thighs and garnished with curly leaf green lettuce and curly parsley. Pretty huh?

Here's a picture of Phil Rizzardi up on the trailer at the Klose Backyard Chef. We cooked the Chicken Thighs and Ribs in this behemoth. Brisket and Pork Shoulder were cooked in the Weber Smokey Mountain cookers.

Cooking

Well, it's been a busy two weeks. I promise I will get into more detail, but here's a quick post about my first contests of the year.

First there was Grill Kings, New York's first KCBS sanctioned contest. I cooked with the BBQ-Brethren/Brothers In Smoke team. We came in 4th. Congratulations to Dr. BBQ for taking Grand Champion.

Then there was Guitarbeque, held in Asbury Park New Jersey. Again, cooking with the BBQ-Brethren/Brothers In Smoke team. We came in 3rd. Missed 2nd by .4 of a point and missed 1st place by 1.5 points. Damn.

I will write more later. Two contests back to back was tough. Now it's time to get back to work and family.