Hey Gang,
What a great weekend for a contest. The venue was small, but the competition was pretty stiff.
Congratulations to Russ and crew at Bayou BBQ for a fantastic showing. The fried chicken on Friday was really good, but the venision poppers were a huge hit.
It dosen't ever seem to get any easier, it just flows more smoothly these days. Many thanks to a great group of cooks that help put this show together. Thanks to Finney and the Big GQ for their efforts. I hope The Big GQ learned a little and can apply some of the knowledge to his efforts in the future.
Let there be no doubt that Finney is a hell of a cook. He executed all of the plans to the letter, and helped us put our best foot forward. His taste buds and candid critiques are refreshing and help us grow as a team. Thanks dude!
Here is my take. We cooked a good hog using our ususal techniques shy of glazing it for presentation. It's possible that eliminating the glazing step hurt our final product. I won't eliminate it again in the future. The hog box looked awesome. Every part of that hog was represented classically. I find it hard to swallow that someone can take a hog, pulverize it with a clever, add sauce, and win an whole hog contest. It's dissappointing at best.
The shoulders were fantastic. The two that beat us had to have some damn fine pork. The box looked great.
The ribs lacked our signature zing. I went with a whiskey glaze and dropped the pepper jelly. I think I'll return to the fork in the road.
What can I say about chicken. I got the recipe, I didn't execute the plan. You can bet I will next time.
I cooked a "bangin'" pot of chili for Friday night.
Jethro cooked a marinated flank wrapped around a scallion, with a thai peanut dipping sauce. The "refined" judges didn't know that the "stuff in the tomato was a dippin' sauce". Actually, it was in a red pepper, and one judge told me they ate it with a spoon. :roll: The only issue was in the scallion. It didn't have good bite through.
All in all it was a great weekend. All of my pics are dupes of what is posted. Ya'll keep those box pics away from JT. He know's enough already. :P :P
It was good Q!
Jack