Pork in the Park 2011

The weekend started off pretty bad. First, we rented a trailer to haul our gear with and my hitch didn't work right. After several hours, that got fixed and then we couldn't find the right chicken we needed. My 'source' was low on inventory and it took us much longer than expected to get the desired 24 organic chicken thighs. Worst of all, the weatherman was predicting very high winds for the weekend and there is nothing more hated than wind when cooking outdoors.

We arrived in Salisbury, MD around 10:30am on Friday and things started to improve for us. We picked out a good space, not too far from the judges tent and ended up with some great neighbors...The Swinging Swiners, 5-0 BBQ, Saucey Butts BBQ and Hog Wild were all a lot of fun. Kids were running around everywhere, which helped keep ours entertained and out of our hair!

The wind did impact our cooking quite a bit. Over the last year, we have done practice cooks in heavy rain, 3 feet of snow, extreme cold, but never in 30-40 mph winds. I was shocked at how fast our coals burned and we often found ourselves battling cooker temps that were way below our target.

After everything was turned in, we were most optimistic about Chicken and Brisket. Our ribs had great flavor, but were not tender enough. The Pork ended up over done somehow and was a little too tender (otherwise known as mushy). Going into the judges tent at 5pm on Saturday, we were pretty convinced that we would be walking out again without a call. With 120 of the best East-Coast teams in attendance, it would take some good judging and a little luck to take home some cash.

Last year at this event, we realized that a lot of team names start with the word 'Smoke'. Smokers in Paradise, Smokin Dudes, Smokin for Fun, etc.. So when they are calling out the winners, you can't jump up too quick if you think they are calling Smokis Porkis. We have to wait to make sure it really is us they are calling. We learned this the hard way.

When they were calling 2nd place for Chicken, it seemed like slow motion as she said, 'SSSmmmmmooooooo' and I was sure it was not going to end well. But sure enough, Sandy finished it the right way and Blaine and I looked at each other in total disbelief. They actually called us!!! It was a great feeling to stand up there in front of a tent full of amazing cooks and get this award. The $500 check didn't hurt either.

We ended the weekend with the following scores:
Chicken - 2nd
Ribs - 71st
Pork - 49th
Brisket - 42nd

Which gave us an overall finish of 33rd. Ending up within the top 30% of a field like this is something we are very proud of. This was only our 4th competition and many teams go years before scoring this well.

Now it is up to us to prove that it wasn't a fluke and do better in the next one!

The Smokis Porkis Story

Our first BBQ tournament is Oct 3rd and the team had been struggling for weeks to come up with a name for ourselves. We must have come up with 100's of names and whenever we settled on one, a quick google search would point out that someone else had already used it. (My favorite was 'Rub Me Tender'...but that is already taken by another local team.)

Anyway, it might seem weird, but I was trying to think of a logo before we even had a name. Somehow my mind landed on the Virginia Flag, which was my twitter avatar at the time and I started thinking about how we could make it our own. I did a little research and this is what I found.

The picture on the seal of Virginia's deep blue flag is portraying the state motto - Sic Semper Tyrannis - or, Thus Ever to Tyrants, in plain English. This is what always happens to unjust rulers. At the time of it's flag design in 1776, Virginia and other colonies were fighting for independence from England, who to them were tyrants. The woman, virtue, represents Virginia. The man holds a whip and chain, indicating he is a tyrant. They have fought a battle, and the tyrant lies on the ground defeated, his fallen crown nearby.

At dinner (Brisket) over at my teammate Cam's house, we brainstormed how this could be altered to represent BBQ and we settled quickly on replacing the Tyrant with a pig and the crown with a trophy.

We had a logo concept but still NO NAME!!! We started thinking about the Latin phrase at the bottom and spent a good hour online with an English to Latin translator, spitting out various phrases that just didn't sound right. Things started to click when we started inventing Latin words. SMOKIS PORKIS was born!

A friend at work did me a solid and turned our thoughts into reality.

We are incredibly proud of it and hope that our turn-ins are half as good!!

Notes from KCBS Practice Session 8-30-09

A great coach once said, 'You don't practice until you get it right...you practice until you can't get it wrong.' Apparently, I need some more practice! I woke up at 3:50am Sunday morning and put a 10.6 lb Brisket and a 8.9 lb Butt on my buddy Cam's Bandera Smoker. We intend to use this smoker for Brisket and Pork in the Valley Smokin BBQ Comp in October, so I figured it makes sense to practice in the unit we will be using. So glad I did.



I battled the smoker temp all day to the point of exhaustion. I find the Bandera Smoker very difficult to keep the temp up in and resort to throwing whole oak logs in the firebox to get it where it needed to be. I had a few spikes up to 275 - 300, but I think that my occasional dip to 150 caused much bigger problems. Tomorrow, I will do a separate post with the actual temps charted out along with the meat temps.

Here are a few things I decided to test out in this practice round:

Hypothesis #1:
Cooking pork over the brisket improves moisture in Brisket - One of the guys from Dizzy Pig told me earlier this summer that they liked to cooked their brisket underneath of a pork shoulder so that the fat from the Pork drips down on the brisket and helps baste it throughout the cooking process.
My Conclusion:
I don't think this technique helps. I ended up overcooking the Brisket a bit (it went to 204) and it turned out a little dry and a very mild 'crumbly'. It would not have scored really high in a competition. Once it was done, there was still a large layer of brisket fat on top that was very moist and this should be enough moisture to baste the meat. Basically, brisket is not moist because the layer of fat melts down into the meat. It is moist because the temp was in the right zone for the right amount of time....not too short and not too long. If you shoot your temp too high, you break down the proteins which will release the natural moisture from the meat and it won't matter what you put on it, it will be dry and crumbly. Would love to hear what others think.

Hypothesis #2:
Cooking Butt fat side up vs fat side down does not matter much.
My Conclusion:
I believe this is true. I tried cooking fat side down for the first time and the pork was still extremely moist. That being said, I am sticking with fat side up for now on since this did drastically improve my results. I see no reason to change.

Lessons learned:
1) I think that large pieces of meat (11 lb briskets) are too large to put low in a vertical style smoker because they block the heat flow to the meats above it. I ended up slightly overcooking the brisket, but undercooked the smaller pork butt that was cooking above it in the smoker. I didn't realize this was happening until very late in the cooking process. I thought that since heat rises, the region above the brisket would be hotter and I guess I was wrong.

2) Just cooking a butt for 14 hours doesn't mean it is going to be perfect. If the internal temp doesn't reach 190, the meat will not have the proper texture. I topped out at 175 and the bone fell out, as it should, but the texture was a little too firm in most parts. See my 'practice data' post to see what happened exactly.

3) When removing foiled meat from the smoker and placing in the cooler, put the brisket in a pan of some sort to catch any juices that leak out. I wrapped mine in a towel, which soaked up all of the juice that leaked out through an unknown hole in the foil. I was very upset!

4) Trimming fat from the brisket is important. I didn't touch the thick large layer of fat on top before rubbing and I could not taste that the rub in the meat.

I am trying to graph out my temp chart for the cook and will post that soon.

If you have an opinion on anything I said above, please comment. I am looking for as much input as possible.

DC BBQ Battle 2009

I had the chance the other weekend to compete in my first official BBQ competition. The Safeway Barbecue Battle on Pennsylvania Ave in the heart of Washington DC. It was amazing and I wish I had the time to do it more often.

A friend of mine knows a guy from Atlanta who owns a pretty sweet smoker and I volunteered to help out. I was in it to learn and boy did I. It was the first time any of us had ever entered a real tournament and we were pretty proud to pull a 6th place finish in Pork Shoulder in Sunday's Memphis in May contest. Overall, we finished 25th out of 48 teams and I think it is a great start.

I am sure I'll write more about it on here soon...just wanted to get the first post in.