The American Royal. The Super Bowl of BBQ. This is the biggest contest of the year and it's the one every competitive team strives for. It brings teams from all over the country. From California to Maine, and from Washington to Florida. To me this is the beauty of this contest, it brings the best of the best from all over the country. This contest is set up in 2 parts. The first contest is the Invitational. This is held Friday into Saturday. The teams that cook the invitational, are the teams that have won Grand Championships at any contests deemed a "State Championship"in the 2008-2009 season. This year I believe there were 129 competing. Our team was not competing in the Invitational, but we were out there Friday watching these guys cook and hanging out with other teams.
This years winner of the Invitational was http://www.plowboysbbq.com/. This is an awesome and well deserved win for these guys. Todd Johns the head cook for this team is one of the most well respected guys in bbq. Very open and willing to share ideas and will help any team that has a question about bbq.
Friday night of this contest is known more for the party then the Invitational. In my opinion that is too bad because there are so many stories to tell other then the 30,000 people coming out to get drunk and hang out at parties. The simple fact you have teams like Rics Rightous Ribs from San Jose California, who won the Califonia State Championship to qualify for the American Royal. Ric was able to get in touch with the BBQ community and borrow gear from BBQ teams in Iowa and in and around KC. The generosity of these folks allowed his team to come to KC and compete in the Royal. To compete in BBQ is not cheap. To get your gear, that you are used to cooking on, and driving across the country in order to cook is not going to happen very often. It is way to expensive and takes way to much time away from family and work to do it.
Saturday brought a day that we actually did a little cooking. We decided that we would compete in the vegetable category, the baked beans category, the open sides category and the potato category. We have competed in desserts and sides before but not all of them in 1 contest. It was a lot of fun and it was a little hectic. One of the special moments for me ever in cooking BBQ was getting my daughter Madison to finally cook in a BBQ contest. She wanted to cook the dessert category in my opinion she did one hell of a job. She cooked an Oreo Truffle. The presentation was incredible but for whatever reason the judges did not agree. It was very special for me to have her cook along side us and I really hope she continues.
Sunday brought the second half of the bbq contest. This was the Open contest and this contest only brought, I believe 473 teams. Yes 473, thus this is reason why this is the Superbowl of BBQ. Overall we finished 229. Chicken we finished 292, Ribs 120, Pork 294 and Brisket 241 and our highlite was finishing 45th in Sausage!
Our neighbors right behind us, Boondoggle BBQ won the Open. Bobby and Don are brothers, that have been competing about 4 years. It was one hell of an experience seeing these guys win the Open. Could not have happened to 2 nicer guys. There BBQ lives have changed. They are an automatic entry to the Jack Daniels Invitational in 2010, automatic entry to the American Royal Invitational 2010 and the American Royal Open in 2010. To me the beast conversation I had was on Saturday morning. I was out walking around drinking coffee and stopped by Bobby and Don's site to say hi. I asked Bobby if we we were supposed to hang our "Kingford's Charcoal Signs" in public view. Bobby looked at me and said, "I have no idea why the hell Don even signed us up for that challenge. In hate Kingsford and do no even use it". The kicker of that conversation is this..................
Bobby and Don won $12,500 for Grand Champion of the American Royal Open. By signing up for the "Kingsford Challenge," Kingsford just doubled their prize $$$$$$. They walked out of there with a mere $25,000 for cooking on a charcoal they do not even use!
Thanks for following us this season and for coming out to the contests. We will be cooking a lot in the off season and tweaking recipes. We made a lot of progress this season and have a ways to go to get where we want to be.
