Our team approached the 2010 Mobile BBQ Championship/Hog Wild Festival as a challenge – not a challenge to see if we could win; a challenge to ourselves to see if we could actually pull it off – and we did! Double-M Smokin’ Q took 8th place overall in our division with a 6th place in chicken and 16th place in ribs. The backyard division competed only in chicken and ribs but we went full-bore with our division’s two meats as well as pork butt and beef brisket for the practice. I know what you’re thinking – 8th place? Not really anything to get excited about… well… we got excited about that silly 8th place rank. While our recipes aren’t perfected on the two meats with which we competed, we proved the mechanics of the contest and our team to be right and have no doubt the next time we light the smoker for a contest, a higher rank will be inevitable!
For those of you not at least a little bit familiar with how a competition like this works, it’s pretty simple. You select a meat, take note of what time the judges want it turned in then back into your cook time based on that deadline.
Most BBQ competitions primarily judge the “Big 4” which is brisket, pulled pork, chicken, and ribs. Some events also have teams competing in sauce, deserts, and seafood.
Chicken, with its relatively short cook time, is by far the easiest of the “Big 4” to prepare. Teams competing in chicken only can show up to the contest with a grill 2 hours prior to deadline and get their product to the judging tent on time. Ribs are a little more complicated since most ribs experts will “low and slow” their slabs for no less than 3 hours. Pork butt and brisket are the most difficult due to their long-haul smoke of 10 to 12 hours in most cases.
The next thing you have to worry about is getting your rig up to and keeping it at temperature for the duration of your long or short-haul smokes for the different types of meat. Every back yarder, semi-pro, or pro has their own favorite cooking rig and every one of them is better than what the other guy is using. The secret to good BBQ is cooking your product at a consistent low temperature – very slowly. If that means a $100 gas-fired vertical from Wal-Mart, a $3,000 Stump’s rig, a $50,000 custom built rig, or anything in between, all that matters is that you know how to operate your own smoker and control that temperature. Once you learn that little trick, it’s all about the sauce.
Who knows if Double-M will compete again until next year’s Mobile BBQ Championship. I have my eye on one in Decatur, AL in September that looks very interesting —–
