Blue Springs Blazeoff 2006

10th Place - Pork

9th Place - Ribs

26th Place - Overall

Well, we dodged a big bullet at this one.  Seems like the longer you cook, the more stories you pile up.  Everyone has stories of meat not getting done in time, the freakish storm, a disqualification, a missed turn in, or a breakdown on the way to the contest.  We’ve got them all.  At some point, you experience that one contest where everything goes against you.   Well, this was our contest.

On Friday night, I had a little trouble with the cooker while trying to get my meat finished for Buck a Bone sales.  Dean, from Mean Dean’s Smokin Machine, came over to help me figure out why my temp kept dropping in the pit.  We discovered that the rotating drum that feeds the pellets into the auger was jammed.  Cleared the jam, and I was back in business.  Everything was running smoothly through the night and everything was on the pit doing nicely.  Our times were looking to work out perfectly.  Then it happened.  I kicked it up to high and everything stopped.  The pit dropped from about 230 down to 150.  The controller went out with less than two hours before the chicken turn in.
To try and salvage what was left of our contest hopes, which were diminishing by the minute, I quickly grabbed the chicken pieces I wanted to turn in and a smaller rack of ribs.  I headed to the Weber kettle grill which was already hot with coals.  Tossing the rack of baby backs and chicken onto the grill, I finished everything there.  The final product was NOT Pork Pullin Plowboys quality BBQ, but it was the best that we had.  Both the chicken and ribs were a little underdone.  But alas, we pulled out a surprising 9th in ribs out of 76 teams.  The pork and brisket were not even close to being done.  Luckily, we still had meat in a cooler that we were planning to sell that day.  It was pulled off of the smoker during the middle of the night and was packed solid in this cooler under 15 lbs. of baked potatoes.  Those baked potatoes acted like hot bricks in an oven.  The meat was still above 145 degrees.  So I put some of our best pieces of pork butt into a pan and tossed them on the Weber to warm them up a little more.  Randy sliced the brisket which had dried out.  The pork, we felt, was our best product, but still not worthy of a call.  The brisket was the worst we’ve ever entered, at least in the last three years that we finally learned how to do a good brisket.  Again, we were totally surprised by a 10th place call in Pork.  Rick of Smokin’ Mother Ruckers BBQ Team told us we should have let that smoker break one more time and we could have won the whole contest as well as we finished.  Not our best finish, but two calls when you expected zero is really saving the day.

All of a sudden, our Pork is hitting at contests.  A 5th at Marshall, 3rd at Des Moines (out of 80 teams), and now 10th in Blue Springs.  We also got a 5th place pork call at Desoto, KS in 2005 to finish the season.  In a year’s time that’s four calls to just one 8th place call in the prior three years.  A second place chicken at the 2006 Missouri State Fair means that we can hit any category on any given day.  We just need one of those days where everything comes together enough to win.  We are still seeking that Grand Championship, which feels closer than ever.

We sold $532 in Buck a Bone sales.  20% of that goes to charity in Jackson county, which we feel good about.  I also had $190 in pre and post contest sales.  After covering some expenses, we’re going to get new shirts and sponsor banners for next year.

Next contest is this weekend at Nationwide RV in Grain Valley and then on to Liberty where we got our first and only KCBS Reserve Grand Champion call.