Connersville,Decatur, and Ethnic Expo…

I know I havent kept up to date with this, but it is hard to find time to sit down and recap competitions. This has been our busiest year yet in Competition BBQ.  We just competed in our 11th competition so far this year at the Decatur, Al 2012 Riverfest. A few weeks before that we were in Connersville,In for the Thunder in the Park and from the weather forecast that is exactly what we thought it was going to be with the remnants of the hurricane blowing through it was tough to find 25 teams willing to cook the event. We ended up making the 25 team limit. We had a pretty good showing with a 3rd overall and 4 category calls. Congrats to Kevin from Juicy Butts BBQ for his 1st KCBS GC. Connersville was supposed to be the last competition of the season, but we decided to try our hand at a few more before the end of the year.

We set our sights on Decatur,Al for its 2012 Riverfest competition (made famous by BBQ Pitmasters) it was a short 6 hour drive down I-65S then we hung a right at the rocket and found ourselves at the home of Big Bob Gibson… Check in was a breeze as we were greeted by Ken Hess and directed to site 34 which would be home for the weekend. Pretty uneventful night as we ate at Big Bob Gibson’s restaurant and then returned to get started on prepping the meat for the fire. Apparently they had a famous music star there by the name of Lee Brice and there was one hell of a concert Friday night. After a short nap we put the meat on the Jambo Pit and took a walk around and met up with George from Pitmaker at the Kingsford tent. We got an upclose view of the Kingsford Pitmaker Vault trailer… All i can say is I now want a Pit Maker Pit, their quality is great and i think it would fit in to our vending needs.  We were pleased with out turn in boxes and even tried a new pork recipe… On to Rewards… We were just hoping for a to 15 finish in that group of competitors. In the end we received a 4th place chicken, 1st place Pork, and 4th overall (tieing for 3rd but losing the tie breaker) needless to say we were ecstatic with our results. We even recieved a big check from Kingsford for the Kingsford Challenge.

On the way home from Decatur we decided that we can cook one more event for 2012 and that is in White County, Ga at the end of October. We will also be vending at the 2012 Ethnic Expo in Columbus, In for the 2nd year in a row on October 12&13, 2012

To finish off here are some pictures from the last few competitions…

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Busy few months… quick update and then were off again…

It has been a busy few months since the last post, we have competed several times, vended at a few places and actually had a weekend off… here are some pictures from the past few months, like they say a picture is worth a thousand words…

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Trip to Texas, Memphis BBQ Co., and the Milk Cow Music Festival…

Trip to Texas, Memphis BBQ Co., and the Milk Cow Music Festival…

         I know this was promised to be posted earlier in the week, but I have been lazy and trying to recuperate from the last week and get busy planning the next couple weekends.

       First off, I need to thank the sponsors of Big JT’s Smokin’ BBQ which are, Simply Marvelous BBQ, Mojobricks, and Drapers BBQ. Without the support of these companies we would not be able to do what we do.

       It was a long week; we left for Burleson, Texas at 4:00am on Memorial Day to start the first leg of the trip to pick up the Jambo Pit. We arrived at about 7:30 pm Monday night. During the trip we stopped off at the Memphis BBQ Company to eat lunch and catch up with Pete and Melissa from Yazoos Delta Q. I went to their first class in 2010 and learned all about competition bbq both KCBS and MBN styles. If you get a chance to stop in do yourself a favor and stop by. The food is great and they also have non-bbq items on their menu. Once in Dallas we ate a place called Texas Land and Cattle Company, not really knowing what to expect from the place but it was highly rated and recommended by the hotel staff.  The place was not busy at all and we were seated as soon as we walked in the door. The food was very good and it really wasn’t all that expensive of a place to eat at.

       The next morning we were up early and heading to meet up with Jamie Geer( www.jambopits.com ). We pulled into his driveway and there it was… Once we all made the introductions and small talk Jamie walked us through the inner workings of the pit and also his shop. We saw a J-3 Model in the paint booth being painted New Orleans Saints Gold. After about an hour we were back on our way home with the new pit in tow. It pulled like a dream and we had comments about it at every gas station and rest stop.

     We finally got home after another stop at Memphis BBQ Co. and loaded the Jambo into the garage. After a few hours of sleep I woke up and lit a fire in it. I played with controlling the fire and felt that I had a good handle on it…more on that later…

     So fast forward to Friday, i picked up the completed sign from a local airbrush guy, and he did a pretty good job, mounted it on the Jambo and headed north to Fair Oaks,In Milk Cow BBQ competition. there were several tough teams in the field of 50 and we were just hoping to get everything cooked and turned in since cooking on the new pit.  We woke up around 3am and lit the fire and the pit came up to temp in about 35 minutes, i’m pretty sure i built too big of a fire as we were having issues with the pit wanting to run cool when both intake and exhaust was fully open after realizing this we were able to make some adjustments and get everything on track. I felt pretty good about the entries except for chicken… When it came time for awards I wasn’t expecting much, but was hoping for something. We finally heard our name called for a 2nd place brisket only to be beat out by Able Acres and 1 appearance point. the real suprise came from the overall rankings, we didnt expect an overall call due to only being called up one time. We ended up 10th overall out of 50 teams which i thought was very respectable considering the caliber of teams at the competition. We scored out highest score ever and it would have GC or RGC a few competitions last year but it was only good enough for a 10th place.

Next we are gearing up for one of my favorite competitions at Jeffersonville Smokin’ on the River. We are competing in a rib throwdown against 8-10 other teams on friday and then the normal competition turn ins on saturday.

The next weekend we will be competing and vending at the Franklin Smokin’ on the Square event so it will be a very busy couple of weeks, but hopefully the payoff is a good one.

2012 Benton Kookoff

First competition of the season has come and gone, and while we expected a little better placing, we had a great time.  First off, Thank you to Shane and his crew from Drapers BBQ(www.drapersbbq.com). He went out of his way to help us out so we could travel to the comp light and cook. Between the use of his Toy hauler, cooking on the Tucker Cooker (www.tuckercooker.com) I do have to say the Tucker Cooker is an impressive piece of work and if i hadnt already spent the money on a Jambo, i would say that i would probably pick up a Tucker, hell I think I will just get both… Also, we were told we were having burgers for dinner, and I expected run of the mill burgers… NOT Shane and Co. made up some monster 1lb Bacon and Cheese stuffed burgers cooked on the Grilla pellet cooker that were amazing, I had one and had to go into a food coma for a bit.  We also got a sneak preview of the new Brisket / Beef rub called Moo’d Enhancer which is pretty amazing, and is going through some testing here at home so I can incorporate the rub into our Competition arsenal, it helps bring out  the beef flavor that can get lost in all the other flavors of BBQ. It is a very bold rub, but not overpowering.

As for the cook itself, it couldn’t have gone any better, well that is until turn in time. With our chicken turn in we went outside the box a bit and i’m not sure how the judges really cared for it, scores weren’t too bad but it didn’t place well (29/42). Our ribs were very good, but then again we fell short of the top ten with an (18/42) placing. Pork was our bright spot of the day with a 9th place showing thanks to DBQ Smokin Sauce. Now to brisket… my strongest category from last year where were weren’t out of the top 10 … this brisket that was cooked was the best we have ever done, flavor was outstanding, tenderness was spot on… not sure what was going on in the judges tent but I was for sure the brisket was a top 5 product, but it finished  22nd. So i was a little disappointed in the showing, but we have to stay the course our next competition is in Liberty, Indiana in May. Hopefully we will have the Jambo by then so we can get the smoke rolling with it.

We did get to walk around and meet a bunch of great guys on the BBQ Circuit,  we chatted it up with Chris Chadwick from Grillin and Chillin and Bill Arnold from Blues Hog BBQ plus many more that we see more often on the trail such as Bourbon Barrel BBQ, Pappy Q, and the eventual GC Eat More Butt. A big Congrats goes out to those guys. Also want to thank Mojobricks (www.mojobricks.com) and Simply Marvelous BBQ (www.simplymarvelousbbq.com) for their great products we couldn’t do it without your support!

New goodies in the mail today

Got some new goodies in the mail today, cant wait to give them a whirl with the practice chicken I have on right now… More pics to follow!