Well, you’ve heard the saying ‘at least we weren’t DAL’?
We don’t use that expression anymore.
The event was ‘Smoking on the Square’ in Pensacola, and site was great….. except for the reserved Port-a-Potties. We didn’t know anything about them, so we didn’t reserve one. Let me just say that would have been a right handy piece of information to have in advance. As a result, we had to walk, or in one case, walk quickly boarding on a trot, to the Port-a-Potty located roughly a quarter mile away. We had electricity and water to the site. On one side were some folks originally from NYC (his father was a NYC cop), and on the other side were some folks from Searcy, Arkansas ( a place I know well). Good folks.
Contest started Friday morning at 6:00. We had to wait until 6:15 to leave the house because the lights on the trailer failed to function on demand. All good, they started working mid-way to Pensacola and we got there in time to get to our spot without trouble. We had an 18 lbs brisket, 2 pork shoulders, 9 racks of good looking loin ribs, and 15 chicken thighs. We took both the big smoker and the Big Green Egg. We backed into our start times based on turn-in times, and started drinking wine and rum. We started the shoulders and brisket at about 4:00PM on Friday. Ken and I baby sat the fires all night, and froze our asses off. Florida blood.
Catfish (my son) and Maggie (Land Shark) were in attendance most of both days. Neither the Fish nor the dog were any trouble at all. Ratboy enjoyed drinking beer and hanging out. He met a hot nurse from Ole Miss and I though he was gonna hit me up for hotel money. At 6:00AM, we put the ribs on. At 7:00AM we brined the thighs, and put them on the Big Green Egg at 9:00. Fires were no trouble.
Having done a little more research on brisket cooking, we executed the following plan. It was on the egg over a mix of lump charcoal and hickory chips at 225. Using my fuzzy deluxe radio temp probe thingy, we monitored the internal temp of the brisket. When the internal temp hit 150, we put the brisket in a large aluminum chaffer, covered it with aluminum foil, re-inserted the probe, and returned it to the fire (this time in the big smoker which freed up the BGE for the chicken mentioned above). The guy whose method we were following said to expect it to stall at 170 or so for about 2 hours. Ours did not stall. We watched the meat slowly go from 150 to 203. At 203, we let the temp in the smoker creep back down to 180 or so (to ‘hold’ the brisket). At 9:00 we pulled the brisket and the pork shoulders from the fire, wrapped them tightly in foil, and placed them in a cooler to stay warm and happy. That just sounds wrong…but that’s what we did. We used a cooler to keep it warm.
Ribs did well. At about 10:30, some were starting to lift well and look nice, so we foiled about half of the ribs.
At turn in, Landi had great looking lettuce, kale (it’s legal now) and parsley. She put together great turn-in boxes. The ribs looked, cut and tasted great, but were just a tad too tender. Over-cooked. 🙁 Just a tad, but it was enough to screw up pretty good. The Chicken looked great, and tasted great but again, over cooked just a bit and a touch dry as a result.
Pulled pork pulled like a champ. Looked great, and had a super smoke ring. But, it still just smoked pulled pork with a pretty good sauce, so it’s just not going to compete well with rubbed and injected butts. Ken has suggested that we begin rubbing our butts, but I think that may have been the Rum talking.
The brisket was like butter. It was so tender it was difficult to cut, and it was moist beyond belief. I suspect it may have been a tad over cooked too. It tasted, however, magical. The best brisket we have ever done by far.
So, there were roughly 40 teams in the professional division. 39 of the teams did well and were thrilled that we were there. In most of the categories, we occupied either the position of honor (DAL) or very, very near to it. I suspect we got dinged badly on each item because we over-cooked. It’s been a while since I’ve fired up the big smoker, and
it just got away from me in terms of judging doneness in a timely fashion.
Well, that’s the scoop. it was a long and tough two days. Ken and I were up from 4:30AM on Friday until the contest ended on Saturday afternoon. I got to be at 8:30 last night, and slept till 4:00 when we had to get the Beer Monkey to the airport for his 6:10 flight. (what? 6:10?) Landi was kind enough to take the boy to the airport, so I
just said ‘bye’ and went back to bed. All in all, I think everyone had a good time, and it’s a definite ‘do again’ for next year, and maybe we won’t be ‘Dead Ass Last’ (DAL).
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