Arlington BBQ Festival

This past weekend Meat, Drink and Be Merry (my BBQ team) entered a contest in Arlington, TN. This is the first time anyone on our team has ever entered anything outside of MIM (Memphis in May), so we had no idea what to expect.

It was much smaller. Only 30 teams entered in all. Many of these teams were professional teams that had multiple trophies to show off. We were a bit intimidated with our one Backwoods Smoker and two classic Weber Grills. However, everyone was very nice to us, even giving us advice and letting us try some of their food. Our neighbors were Planet BBQ and Sweet, Swine O'Mine. Both veterans on the BBQ circuit. I must thank them for all their advice, even though we were competiting against them.

The first night we reheated some pork shoulder that one of the team members (Chris Niederer) cooked over the previous weekend. We also had bratwurst (boiled in beer), hamburgers, cole slaw, bean salad, smoked mac & cheese, been casserole, chocolate chip cookies, and way too many jello shots. It was a relaxed evening with kids playing, people eating and drinking, footballs flying, and Elvis singing in the background. Great night.

Before going to bed, we slathered the 12 racks of ribs with mustard and dry rub. My dry rub recipe is called "Smoking Mocha", which features an African Yoruba chocolate powder and an instant Italian espresso along with other classic herbs and spices like Chipotle chili powder, Spanish smoked paprika, and thyme. We wrapped each rack in platic wrap and then put them back in the cooler for the night.

Chris and I made the mistake of camping out at our BBQ site. The teams entering in whole hog cook the hog for over 12 hours and check on their pigs throughout the night, keeping us from sleeping. After about 45 minutes of sleep, we got up at about 5:45 to start our ribs.

The smoker we use is called a Backwoods Smoker "Party Model". It can fit 12 racks of ribs pretty comfortably. The nice thing about the Backwoods is the area where the meat goes is completely air tight and separated from the hot box. The smoke and heat goes up the sides of the smoker into the meat compartent through the top and then out through a chimney on the bottom, evenly circulating the smoke throughout.

Once we got the smoker going, we added apple and cherry wood. We like the fruit wood rather a hickory, as it is a bit lighter and doesn't overwhelm the flavor of the rest of the meat. We then put each rack on the smoker at about 7am, rotating the rack and spraying with apple juice every hour. We tried to keep the heat around 225. However, the first hour was probably a little cold at 215 and the third hour was probably a bit hot at 245-250. After 2.5 hours, we removed the racks and wrapped them all in foil meat side down with honey and a little bit of apple juice. Then we put them back in the smoker for another 1.5 hours at around 215. I would have liked it a bit hotter, but all the racks wrapped in tin foil made it hard to get the heat to circulate.

After 2.5 hours, I unwrapped the ribs and put the sauce on each rack. The sauce was a sweet sauce with a ketchup base and heavy in molasses and honey. I added a some chipotle powder, garlic and onion powder, and some other spices. This a great sauce for a glaze, but a little too sweet to use as a regular sauce.

I then split the racks into two groups. I put six of them on the Weber grills and six back on the Backwoods smoker. The goal with the Webers were to give the rack a little more of a crispy bark, then I could get with backwoods.  After 30 minutes, I took them out of the smoker and off the grill. It turns out the ones in the smoker looked a lot better and seemed to have enough of a bark for competition.

We picked the four racks we thought were the most tender. We wrapped the rest and stored them in a cooler. I cleaned up these four racks so the sauce looked even and there weren't any bare areas of bone showing. We cut one up to turn into for the blind judge and wrapped the last three for the three judges that came by the booth.

Our final score is a combination of four judges that evaluate the blind judgment entry and the three judges who come by the booth. We are graded on booth cleanliness, presentation, rib appearance, rib taste, rib tenderness, and overall impression.

Finally, we cleaned up the booth and waited for the judges to come by to tell them the story and show off our ribs. The first judge happened to be a judge we had at MIM that gave us our worst scores. This left me a bit nervous. This time, however, he absolutely loved us. Said we improved by 100 percent. He ended up giving us 10's for everything across the board, compared to the 8's he gave us in May.

In the end, we got tenth place out of 22. To be honest, I was ecstatic. We beat a number of teams that seem to do this professionally and we made a huge improvement over Memphis in May. All in all, it was a great weekend. Now I have to find some more contests to enter (and get some sleep).

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