Our kitchen area at the site. The balloons on the table had the newspaper article tied to it and was a gift from one of CW's neighbors.
Friday, which was our 4th day at the cookoff was a very busy day. Along with the party we had planned for late afternoon, we also had to get started with the contest. The meat inspector came around about 10:00am on give us the ok on our meat. The team had planned to do the chicken with two different methods so we got started on this. We selected the best 16 thighs out of the 24 that we had and got them trimmed up and ready to go. We took 8 of these thighs and placed them in a large zip-lock bag and poured marinade over them and placed them back into the cooler. The other 8 thighs also went into the cooler as we didn't use a marinade on these pieces. We had a little time here as our party wasn't scheduled to start until about 4:00pm so we had a chance to walk around and meet some of the other competitors and also watch them set up for the contest.
About 3:30pm, we fired up a couple of cookers and got them ready for the party. I had made some super spicy Italian sausage and along with this meat, we had pepperoni, ham, and probably one or two more that I can't remember at this time. For the veggies, we had mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, black olives, and some others. We also had about 4-5 different cheeses. In fact, we had so much that we didn't get to all of it! When the guests started arriving, CW started the pizza on one of the cookers and a little later, I started the calzones on another cooker. We had a nice crowd of friends and family and the pizza and calzones were just great. I don't think anybody went away hungry as we had plenty. We had asked the folks that we invited to come between 4:00 and 7:00pm as we needed to get cleaned up and start the cook. We got everything all cleaned up by about 8:00pm and the first cooker loaded again with a full load of fresh charcoal. Time to get serious!
We went to the cooks meeting at about 8:30pm and I think this took about 30 minutes. We also picked up our containers for the presentation.
The team selected the best of our two pork butts and it weighed about 7.5 pounds. We trimmed this butt up and added the rub. At about 9:00pm, we placed this butt on the ceramic cooker on the top layer of my "contraption" and set up one of our remote probes. Got this cooker dialed in at 240 degrees at the grid. We expected this butt to get done in about 12 hours. Had a little time here to visit with our cooking neighbors. Around 11:00pm, we got our best brisket all trimmed up and rubbed and ready to go on the cooker. I think this flat weighed about 6-1/2 pounds. We put this flat in the lower level of the contraption in the first cooker so the butt would drip down on it for added fat or moisture. We figured that this brisket would take about 10 hours with a grid temp around 240 degrees. At this time, we had about 5-6 hours to grab a nap or visit with the other cooks. I got the first nap for about 80 minutes as Mike kept the cooker all dialed in and then I relieved him so that he could get some sleep. It was just a beautiful night and about 75 degrees and there was another team from Indiana there that I didn't know so I got to visit with them for about 2-3 hours during the night. I would come back to our site to check and also baste our meat about every hour. Cooker was holding good and I don't think we made very many adjustments during the night. Bout 3:00am, CW came rolling in to get started on some of our ribs and chicken. He arrived a little early so we had some time to talk about what we wanted to do and visit a little. He had planned to do 3 slabs of ribs and 8 pieces of chicken on the Primo Oval. The team had decided to do the chicken and ribs with two different recipes and then present what we thought was the best. He got the oval loaded with charcoal and ready to go. I got another cooker ready for our other rib recipe. At about daylight, the team started on our two rib recipes. Got the loin back ribs out and removed the membrane (course cw really showed me up on the membrane removal and had his done before I got my first one off) and he had to help me with one of the slabs which I don't think he will every let me forget but we did get them off and rubbed and ready for the cooker. We got the two rib recipes loaded on the two cookers. CW was cooking three slabs and I was cooking two slabs. I think I got mine loaded at about 6:00am and I expected the cook to take 6 hours with a grid temp around 225 degrees. After these were loaded, I got 8 of our chicken thighs out of the marinade and put a rub on them. The teams plan was to cook them low and slow until they were at about 180 degrees internal and then finish them up over a direct flame in another cooker to get the skin right. The teams plan for our other recipe was to cook them slow thru the whole cook. Anyway, we got the chicken loaded in the two cookers at around 7:00am. CW used a very unique setup in the oval for one of our chicken recipes. He had the 3 slabs of ribs near the front of the cooker and then set up a couple of firebricks on the back half of the cooker and then suspended the chicken thighs with wood skewers from the top of the firebricks. Really slick!!
Not much to due for a couple of hours other than keeping track of our 3 cookers until about 9:00am when the local Hy-Vee store was to come to the site with the leaf lettuce and parsley so we did go and get our veggies for the cook. Washed and trimmed this stuff up and placed it in some zip-lock bags so we would have it ready.
Somewhere around 8-9am, Cheryl showed up at our cooking site with some pecan rolls and a quart of orange juice and kind of surprised us. Cheryl is a great cook from Ames, Iowa who was one of the original team members but had to drop out due to circumstances which prevented her from competing with us in this event. She is a many times 1st place winner at the Iowa State Fair and a well known cook. The rolls she brought were still warm and she told us that it was a practice recipe for the upcoming state fair. She competes in many classes at the fair and always does well. These still warm rolls were as good as anything I have ever tasted in my life. I was hoping that she would hang around and help us with our presentation but she had to leave. Maybe next year we can get her to cook with us. She is a hell of a lot prettier than the two old duffers that I had been looking at all week!
From here on out to the end of the presentation, everthing was a blur as we had many thing to get done to be sure we got every meat done and turned in on time. Our turn in times for chicken was 12:30pm, ribs at 1:00pm, pork at 1:30pm, and brisket at 2:00pm. We had only a 10 minute time frame with each of these meats to get them turned in. By now the public was all over our site which made it a little more difficult to get things done on time.
Somewhere around 8:30am, the team glazed our pork butt. I think we got this butt off at about 10:30am and we wrapped it and placed it into a cooler. We had expected the brisket to get done around this time but it took slightly longer. After the glaze, I think we got it off the cooker at about 11:00am and we also wrapped it and placed it into the cooler. We loaded this first cooker again with a full load of charcoal to get this cooker ready to grill one of our chicken recipes direct after we had got it smoked and about done on the other cooker. At the same time, the team was keeping a close watch on the ribs and chicken. We basted one of the rib recipes with apply juice and applied a glaze about 45 minutes before they got done. The other recipe we were using didn't require a baste but we did use a glaze on them as well. I think we got the two slabs that we were cooking on the smaller cooker off the fire around 11:45am and they were wrapped and placed in the cooler. We had taken the first 8 pieces of chicken when they reached about 180 internal off the smaller cooker and placed them in our secret sauce for about 25 minutes and then they went back into the hot cooker running direct at about 400 degrees to to get the skin cooked just right. Our timing was just a little off here as we wanted them done at about 12:15 but they got done about noon. Wrapped them up in tin foil. While this was going on, CW was cooking our other two recipes for ribs and chicken on the big oval. The team decided that we needed the meat off the oval at about noon and sure enough, CW got it done at the right time. He wrapped the ribs and the chicken so we were really over the hump as we had all the meats done and ready which is just so very important in a contest. We had met our first goal and it sure felt good. Had about 15 minutes to drink a beer and get ready for our first presentation which was the chicken. At 12:15 we sampled our two chicken recipes and selected the one that the team wanted to use. Lined the box with leaf lettuce and placed our best 6 pieces in the box. As a judge, I thought our chicken would do good in taste and tenderness as it was real good but I figured we might take a hit on appearance as we didn't have the same color on all 6 pieces. Could have done better here with a little more careful grilling of the pieces after the slow cook. Sent Mike to the judging area with our chicken at about 12:25 pm. While he was gone, we got out our two rib recipes. Again, we selected what we thought was the best recipe and got these ready in the presentation box. I felt that these ribs would do pretty good in tenderness but didn't figure we would do as good in taste and appearance as again, we had some color problems on the outside and I thought we could have done a little better with our taste. Still very good ribs. Sent this entry in and started on the pork. Got this baby busted up and placed in the box and it really looked good. Great color, great taste, and good tenderness. Thought we would do pretty good with this entry. Sent this one in about 1:25pm. Got the brisket out and started slicing and it sure looked great. Picked out 6 slices from the middle of the meat and placed them in the box. The team really did a super job with the slicing and the pieces we presented were about 1/4 inch thick and all very even in thickness and length. The taste was super and the tenderness was perfect. We all thought that this was our best effort. Sent this entry in at about 1:55pm and then just collapsed. I had only a little over one hours sleep in the last 36 hours so I was pretty tired. Nothing more to do now than get our remaining meat ready for the guests that will come by in the afternoon. Drank a little beer and waited for the awards which I think was about 4:00pm. We waited for our teams name to be called but it was not to be as we didn't get into the top 10 in any catagory.
This contest has a prize fund of 15,000 dollars which is pretty high for a contest and had drawn some of the best cooks in the area. We were competing against about 60 teams and our goal at the beginning was to try to finish in the middle of the pack with our rag-tag team.
Without taking a lot of time to explain the judging, the meat is judged on it's own merit and all meat starts out as a 9 and then is judged down from this perfect score. It is blind judging and one sample is not compared to another sample. It must stand on it's own. Each sample of meat is tasted by 6 judges and the low score is thrown out. The meat is judged for appearance, tenderness and texture, and the taste. With the lower score thrown out, a team will receive 15 scores with each sample. (5 judges scoring 3 items)
Chicken--we received 10 perfect scores of nine and 5 scores of eight and finished 24th with this entry out of the 60 teams. I think this is very good for our effort.
Pork Ribs--we received 6 perfect scores of nine and 9 scores of eight and finished 38th in the contest. Should have done better here.
Pork--we received 9 perfect scores of nine and 6 scores of eight and finished 24th in the contest with this meat.
Brisket--we received 4 perfect scores of nine, 9 scores of eight, and 2 scores of seven and finished 48th in the contest with this meat. Our two seven's came in tenderness and I think it was from being too tender as we might have slightly over cooked the meat. We still thought is was our best entry and it turned out to be our worst.
All these scores are pretty good as we were competing against some very good cooks. I am happy with the scores as I felt we were in the ballpark and could probably do better in the next cook with the experience the team has gained in this cook. To only receive 2 sevens as our lowest score out of 60 possible scores with our meat with all our other scores at eight or above is great for our rag-tag team. It doesn't sound too good to say that our best finish was 24th in both pork and chicken but this 24th place finish did beat 36 of the best teams in the country in these two meats. Heck, that does sound better!
Came back to the cooking site and drank a beer and went to bed at about 5:00 pm and slept about 12 straight hours. I think Mike followed me about an hour later and he also slept for many hours.
Sunday was our last full day at the contest site and CW and Mike worked to get all of CW's cookers and contest stuff home and put back where he wanted it. I worked at cleaning up the camper, and doing the dishes and getting all the garbage hauled out from the site. I also got the camper loaded and ready to go home. We went out for supper on this last evening as we didn't want to do any cooking. Came back to the site and said our good-bys and this was hard to do as we had just about lived together for about 6 days. Was kinda hard to break up the "Over the Hill Gang" as we knew we might not be together again for some time and and I am sure there was a tear or two in our eyes. We left for home early on Monday morning and got in about 2:00pm.
This whole trip was just about as much fun as I have had in quite a few years. It just seemed that everything fell into place. We didn't know CW as other than an e-mail friend and we hit it off right at the start. Mike spent most of the week hunting for a micro-wave as he wanted to show his championship cooking but I am sure glad that he didn't find one. Other than CW, the rest of the team was cooking on unfamiliar cookers and we still were able to do a fine job with the cookoff. Even our Friday night party went well. It just don't get any better than this.
We sure hope that CW will ask us back again to be a part of the Iowa team as we have had our warm up cook and plan to kick some butt the next cook.
I didn't get any pictures after Thursday as we were pretty busy but will show a couple more of the pictures we got earlier in the cookoff.
Our kitchen area at the site. The balloons on the table
had the newspaper article tied to it and was a gift from one of CW's
neighbors.
Another view of our cookoff setup.
Our supper with the prime rib and you can see CW's
"beater" truck as he calls in in the background.
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