This was the first year Topeka has had a contest in about 5 years. Jon is from Topeka so he suggested that we cook it. Will, his son Zach and Jon headed out Friday morning and got to T-Town around 12:00. It was hot and for a first year contest the organizers did a pretty good job getting all 38 teams in. We got set up and Jon's dad and his dog "Rosco" came out to spend the afternoon and that was pretty cool.
I will go ahead and say, this contest was a complete freaking disaster for Sticks-N-Chicks. If you wanted something to go wrong it did. Here is the list of crap that happened to us!
1) When hanging the team flag we hung it upside down!
2) Ran out of Rib Rub for the ribs Saturday.
3) We had $100 worth of briskets spoil on us Thursday the day before the contest.
4) Our chicken was spoiled when we opened it Friday night to prep it.
5) Forgot our pork injection in Kansas City.
6) Neighbors next to us where noisy as hell partying all night.
7) Jon burned his leg Saturday morning.
8) Generator was turned off the Friday night 2 times by the neighbors, not sure why.
9) Thought the temp on the smoker, cooking ribs was off by 15 degrees. Jacked up temp to make up time and overcooked the ribs.
10) When we wrapped our pork the our wrap broke and the pretty much over all the liquid spilled all over the table.
11) Last but not least we almost managed to kill us all by putting the smoker to close to the trailer Friday night. The smoke started pouring into the trailer when we went to bed! Zach woke us up telling us that smoke was pouring into the trailer, and yes it was. We moved the smoker :)!
Saturday morning we were pretty much over all the crap that happened Friday. We started working on our chicken turn in and the chicken was salty as hell. We scrambled and decided the only thing could do was turn it in skinless, because the skin was what held all the salt. Chicken finished 25th. Ribs were a disaster and we knew it, they finished 35th. Pork was the first meat we pulled off that was decent, but it finished 25th. At this point we were like WTF. We had brisket left to turn in and we thought it was pretty decent.
Sitting at awards, they called the top 10 for all categories. We got to 3rd place in brisket and Will looked at Zach and shook his head, all of us heard who got 2nd, and Zach looked at his dad and said, "there is always first and that was a first place brisket," the next call made was Sticks-N-Chicks for 1st place brisket! Unfreaking believable!
This contest was very well run. We were dumbfounded on the brisket call and to top that we missed a perfect score, which is a 180, 6 tenths of a point! That was incredible and it shows you never give up on any category regardless of what happens. We learned a lot from this contest and trust me we will make sure we learned from our mistakes!
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