Post Smoke on the Water

So we have now officially completed our first KCBS contest. It was much more laid back than any MBN contest any of us have ever done. I completely forgot my camera so I had to borrow Shellie's, my sister-in-law, so we are hoping to have pictures posted soon! Overall the experience was a lot of fun and it was perfect "smokin on the water" weather! Todd cooked the chicken, brisket and butt and Ethan and Matt Brown cooked the Ribs. After arriving at the event and getting set up and our meat inspected, we started to prep the meat. It took a couple of hours to get all the meat prepped. After prepping, all the meats sat a while to marinate which gave us a little time to enjoy a cold beverage, hang out and relax. The brisket is the first thing to be put on the smoker because it takes the longest to smoke. Todd put the brisket on the smoker about midnight on Friday. The next thing that was put on the smoker was the butt and Todd put that on about 2:00am. Then Ethan and Matt Brown put the ribs on about 5:30am on Saturday morning. Todd then started the chicken about 8:30am. So as you can see many pulled an all nighter to watch the meats and keep the smokers at a constant 200 degrees. Many contest require you to garnish your blind judging box. Most KCBS contests recommend you use parsley, so Shellie and Jean were the official parsley girls! For over 3 hours they washed, cut, and weeded the parsley and gently arranged it in 4 blind boxes. They made our blind boxes look pretty! KCBS has standard blind box turn in times for every contest and those are 12pm, 12:30, 1pm and 1:30. It takes about 30 minutes to prepare each box with the meat before turning it into be judged. You also have to take into account how long it takes to walk from your booth to the judging tent. If you are a minute late to turn in your blind box, you are shut out and your meat can't be judged. So as you can see timing is everything when it comes to cooking competition BBQ! We didn't do as well as we liked but we didn't come in last place, which is an accomplishment! We have begun looking for other KCBS contest in the area and hopefully we will be competing in another one sometime soon! If Shellie has anything to do with it, we will be traveling RV to compete in BBQ contests across the country!