BBQ Contest Foods: Fish

Let's take a look at some of the food we submitted at The Hudson Valley Ribfest. Here's a picture of our fish entry. It's grouper steak with a Caribbean pepper sauce. Unfortunately, I don't have the score sheets and I don't remember where it placed. But it didn't do great.

This entry was cooked by one of the Mikes following the recipe as published in Weber's Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking With Live Fire by Jamie Purviance and Tim Turner. Almost. Mike followed the recipe as closely as he could, but it calls for a chunky pepper sauce which is something that is not allowed in a KCBS governed, NEBS sanctioned event. So instead he smashed and chopped up the sauce until he got what you see here. We tried to massage the sauce into the cooked fish with the hope that the sauce would still flavor the fish.

Looking at the picture, I can say it's really a mediocre presentation. I was so off on the boxes this weekend and our scores reflected that. I have no idea how this fish tasted. Mike bought two whole groupers and had them butchered (Do you butcher fish or is there another term for it?) into steaks. I've only seen grouper in filets, so this was an interesting choice, but Mike said that he had never had grouper fillet, only steak. Go figure. I wish there was more, but what you see was all the edible meat from the two fish. It all went to the judges. And they didn't like it.

Oh well, on to the lamb.