Foiled

Well, it’s been a few weeks, and I think I’ve got enough distance on our first full comp of the year to write on it.  On Easter weekend we competed in the inaugural BBQ Capital Cook-Offin Lexington NC .  55 teams competed at this event (but the 55th placed team apparently turned in nothing as their total score was 0.0000), and Degüello BBQ took 3rd in chicken but overall……54th.  Yes that is not a typo.  We were 54th out of 55 teams but essentially last place.  About now I really hope you’re wondering why.  It’s really very simple;  our brisket entry was disqualified due to a foreign object in the box.  I had never been warned about removing ALL tinfoil from your cutting board before cutting, and a tiny sliver of foil was embedded in one of the slices.  Trust me, when Ron Harwell walked up with box in hand I was sick.  But Ron handled the difficult situation well and reminded me we had three more chances at a call.  Thanks for  the kind words Ron.  Congratulation to Two Old Men and a Grill for the Grand Championship.  Chad Hodges  organized a superior first year event and we will be back in 2012.

Here’s the contest rundown:

Chicken: 3rd out of 55 (172.0000)

If you’d told me Friday afternoon we’d have this result I would’ve laughed in your face.  When I opened our cryopacs of chicken after lunch, it was all spoiled.  Sharon mentioned she’d seen a small market about two blocks from the venue, so we took off  on a walk to Conrad and Hinkle.  The nice folks there fixed us up with 15 whole legs they butchered into legs and thighs.  It was really good chicken but I was still rattled.  The prep and cook went well, and the end result was to my liking.  I changed the recipe from  our last comp and I think the flavor was a lot more intense.   Glad the judges agreed.

Ribs:  28th out of 55 (162.2856)

Disappointing result.  Same recipe and prep from our last contest where we took 3rd, but I think these were just a tad undercooked/chewy.  Could be there were just a lot of strong rib cooks, too, but I know how to fix this and we’ll be OK going forward.

Pork: 18th out of 55 (163.4286)

New recipe, and I thought the taste was good.   For whatever reason, however, I thought the presentation was just kind of blah and the texture was only OK.  I really wanted to try a new presentation technique I’d been experimenting with, but I’d had too many mishaps over the weekend and decided to play it safe.  I suspect the score reflected this “play it safe” approach.

Brisket: 54th out of 55 (20.0000)

Tinfoil in the box.  Enough said.

This competition was a real roller coaster.  In addition to the spoiled chicken, we had a power outage and irregular voltage, which caused our Gurus to malfunction plus it rained almost the entire weekend.  But once again we had a plan and stuck to it, and we were able to deal with the issues.  The 3rd place chicken call took a lot of the sting out of the brisket DQ.  We wouldn’t have taken the GC even with a flawless brisket, but it still hurt to get the hook for the foreign object violation.  But as someone told me “You ain’t s**t until you’ve been DQ’ed” so we’ll take it as a learning experience and will clear every single piece of foil from our meat before the knife comes out.

Next up  for Degüello BBQ is the Naptown barBayq in Annapolis this weekend.  Hope you can come out and see us!

Uptown Lexington Pig

Degüello BBQ Camp at Midnight

A beautiful brisket

3rd Place Chicken