Captain Morgan said:
thanks for the pics! Dude, don't apologize for your turn ins...
they look great! brisket and chicken looked a tad oversauced (keep in mind I'm no judge) pulled pork looked a tad dry, which is common
on pics of pulled pork...it may not have been, ribs looked good.
The first truck photo reminds me of my first comp....I looked
like the Beverly Hillbillies pulling in there! But you proved you
belong....and my guess is you had a blast! Enjoy the ride!
Thanks, you are correct on just about everything. We had a blast. The pork dried out very fast, but I put some apple cider on it just before I took that picture. The full image (3MB) shows lots of moisture. This 1MB picture I posted doesn't have the same resolution to show it. sorry
However, I had to make decisions on what to put in that box and it wasn't the stuff I usually do (normally, I'll eat everything including juice and fat when I reheat it). Here, I had two butts to choose from. How much bark, how much chopped pork and some pulled pieces went in there. The more I added sauce and mixed it in, the more it started to look like mush. Amy added the bigger chunks at the last minute and it helped. Scores on appearance was four 8's and one 7. So that was good. Really, that 1/2 hour really goes fast. Glad we found my atomic clock, it came in handy. One turn in was 3 seconds before DQ.
Our ribs and brisket were disasters. One rack of ribs self destructed upon taking off the grill. Of the remaining 3 racks, we had trouble figuring out where to cut and how to cut. We didn't bring the right knives for the job and our cutting skills are weak. The brisket was too tender and we had to cut thick slices to prevent them from breaking. We added more sauce to keep them from drying out. Still, the brisket placed 17th.
Besides the disappointing ribs results, were the chicken scores. I thought we did a decent job on the chicken. It tasted good and was shiny. I'm sure we oversauced them. It would be nice to know why they got 'average' scores.
Overall, we had a great time and were happy that we did average on most things because there is a big difference between cooking for your friends and family and cooking for judges (and submitting with all these great teams). We need more practice, the right equipment, and to learn a lot of things. At least we didn't get DQ'd on anything and we actually did well on the pork (I typically cook better pork and ribs at home than brisket and chicken so at least I wasn't upset at the judges on anything).
As for giving up any other hobbies and spending more time on the Internet: I'd say that is likely true. I'd like to judge some more contests before I dive into this thing. But yes, I'm already thinking about ways to stabilize my WSM temps in high winds (
are there any hot water heater blankets that fit WSMs???