Laurie Missouri, located in the heart of the Lake of the Ozarks was the next stop on our BBQ trail. Will and Christy had planned a family vacation for the same week as this BBQ contest so it only seemed perfect that we head down and meet them in Laurie for this contest. The contest his held in the camping ground for the city of Laurie. It is not level by any means. I wish I would have taken pictures to show how much some of the 5th wheels, trailers etc, were raised of the ground. Some of them when I saw them, I thought if support gives way we could have a disaster on my hands.
With Will and his family already down there, that left me, Matt and Mike to come down at the end of the week. Matt went down Thursday night and Mike came down with his family of Friday morning. I unfortunatley had to work and came down friday evening.
Friday night was spent hanging with friends and celebrating Andy Groneman's (www.smokeonwheels.com ). Andy and his wife Kim threw a huge shrimp boil and it was pretty damn good food. After the party we went back to our camp and just hung out talking to neighbors and then it was off to get some sleep for an early morning wake up call.
We got up and got the UDS'S (Ugly drum Smokers) up and running and up to temp in about 15 minutes. That's one of the beauties of cooking on the trash cans, they get hot and up to temp in a very short period of time. We got the butts and brisket seasoned and on the cans. Now this is were the fun begins. Cooking on cans in my opinion is alot of fun because there is no margin for error. You have to pay attention to what you are doing, if you don't you run the risk of turn that butt, brisket, chicken and ribs into a brand new door stop. You have to constantly run timers and spin and turn the meat to keep it from burning. We finally got the butts and brisket to the desired color we wanted and now it was time to wrap them and stick them in the Fast Eddy (http://www.cookshack.com/) for them to finish cooking. After there in the FE we focused our attention to chicken and ribs.
Everything got done in a timely manner. We were not up against the clock in any of our categories which was good because we had a Kids Q competiton taht we needed to help with. Kids Q to me is always a highlite of any contest. Its were the kids get to compete agains themselves and with the help of there parents get to cook whatever the category the contest pics and cook something up and get it turned in. Most of the time the contests have the kids cook hamburgers or hotdogs and sometimes they really throw it to the kids and make them cook chicken. Any team that says they like chicken is LIEING! Chicken is a hard category and to have the kids cook it is always a treat because they have no idea how hard it is to cook chicken. Anyways for this contest they had the choice of cooking hamburgers or hotdogs. We had cooking in our camp Will's daughter Kennedy, Matts son Andrew and daughter Hannah and Mike son Sammy. All the kids had 1 hour to cook and they had to get there stuff turned in no later then 10:05 am saturday morning. All the kids got there finshed product turned in on time and now Christy (Will's wife) could turn her attention to the dessert she was maiing for the open category. She got the dessert finished and turned in and now we had to wait for the awards to see how everyone did.
All of us felt good about everything we turned in. Nothing was out of line and we actually had what we call a "good problem." A "good problem" is when you cook 2 diffrent recipies for the same type of meat and you have no idea which one to turn in. This happened with our ribs. Mike cooked 3 racks with his recipe and Matt cooked 3 racks with his recipe. We all tasted and debated for a few minutes and then we finally came to a decision on which ribs we were turning in.
Overall we finished 18th out of 77 teams. Chicken we finished 24th out of 77. Ribs we finished 16th out of 77. Pork we finished 25th out of 77 and brisket we finished 29th out of 77. The highlite of the awards came when Will's daughter Kennedy finsihed 2nd overall in the Kids Q with her burger. The next highlite came with Christy (Will's) wife finishing 6th in the Open category. She turned in a ewie goowie brownie. The neat thing with her presentation was with each pice of brownie she gave the judges there was a little cup of milk for each judge to wash there brownie down with.
Looking back this contest, to me puts into perspective what BBQ is all about. Its about hanging with family, hanging out with friends and meeting new friends and cooking good BBQ. Our next contest is this weekend in Olathe Kansas, http://www.wheelsnsqueelsbbq.com/
With Will and his family already down there, that left me, Matt and Mike to come down at the end of the week. Matt went down Thursday night and Mike came down with his family of Friday morning. I unfortunatley had to work and came down friday evening.
Friday night was spent hanging with friends and celebrating Andy Groneman's (www.smokeonwheels.com ). Andy and his wife Kim threw a huge shrimp boil and it was pretty damn good food. After the party we went back to our camp and just hung out talking to neighbors and then it was off to get some sleep for an early morning wake up call.
We got up and got the UDS'S (Ugly drum Smokers) up and running and up to temp in about 15 minutes. That's one of the beauties of cooking on the trash cans, they get hot and up to temp in a very short period of time. We got the butts and brisket seasoned and on the cans. Now this is were the fun begins. Cooking on cans in my opinion is alot of fun because there is no margin for error. You have to pay attention to what you are doing, if you don't you run the risk of turn that butt, brisket, chicken and ribs into a brand new door stop. You have to constantly run timers and spin and turn the meat to keep it from burning. We finally got the butts and brisket to the desired color we wanted and now it was time to wrap them and stick them in the Fast Eddy (http://www.cookshack.com/) for them to finish cooking. After there in the FE we focused our attention to chicken and ribs.
Everything got done in a timely manner. We were not up against the clock in any of our categories which was good because we had a Kids Q competiton taht we needed to help with. Kids Q to me is always a highlite of any contest. Its were the kids get to compete agains themselves and with the help of there parents get to cook whatever the category the contest pics and cook something up and get it turned in. Most of the time the contests have the kids cook hamburgers or hotdogs and sometimes they really throw it to the kids and make them cook chicken. Any team that says they like chicken is LIEING! Chicken is a hard category and to have the kids cook it is always a treat because they have no idea how hard it is to cook chicken. Anyways for this contest they had the choice of cooking hamburgers or hotdogs. We had cooking in our camp Will's daughter Kennedy, Matts son Andrew and daughter Hannah and Mike son Sammy. All the kids had 1 hour to cook and they had to get there stuff turned in no later then 10:05 am saturday morning. All the kids got there finshed product turned in on time and now Christy (Will's wife) could turn her attention to the dessert she was maiing for the open category. She got the dessert finished and turned in and now we had to wait for the awards to see how everyone did.
All of us felt good about everything we turned in. Nothing was out of line and we actually had what we call a "good problem." A "good problem" is when you cook 2 diffrent recipies for the same type of meat and you have no idea which one to turn in. This happened with our ribs. Mike cooked 3 racks with his recipe and Matt cooked 3 racks with his recipe. We all tasted and debated for a few minutes and then we finally came to a decision on which ribs we were turning in.
Overall we finished 18th out of 77 teams. Chicken we finished 24th out of 77. Ribs we finished 16th out of 77. Pork we finished 25th out of 77 and brisket we finished 29th out of 77. The highlite of the awards came when Will's daughter Kennedy finsihed 2nd overall in the Kids Q with her burger. The next highlite came with Christy (Will's) wife finishing 6th in the Open category. She turned in a ewie goowie brownie. The neat thing with her presentation was with each pice of brownie she gave the judges there was a little cup of milk for each judge to wash there brownie down with.
Looking back this contest, to me puts into perspective what BBQ is all about. Its about hanging with family, hanging out with friends and meeting new friends and cooking good BBQ. Our next contest is this weekend in Olathe Kansas, http://www.wheelsnsqueelsbbq.com/
1 comment:
Great time...even better watching Andy get a GC!!!
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