No Whistle Stop This Year

We are not competing in the Whistle Stop Festival this year. Tee ball and other conflicts prevented us from entering. We also knew that based on the last two years, it's going to rain. And sure enough the weather is calling for rain and thunderstorms. We are trying to expand our team so we can still enter competitions when a couple of us are out.

Competition practice

Here are some photos of today's practice. Mark's chicken is the one without the garnish. It was the best chicken, so we decided Mark would take over the chicken full time. Tom's ribs were really good, so were Marks. Tom will still do the ribs. Chads pork was pretty good. He will do the pork. Chads brisket was ok. We are planning on one of the Stevenson's to do the brisket. I used the FAB B Lite injection and cooked it the way I thought it should be, and it still didn't turn out as tender as I would like. Huge load off all of us now that we are decided on a "speciality" for each of us.

Chicken - Mark
Ribs - Tom
Pork - Chad
Brisket - Michael or Luke

Rib Week

Big week for ribs. EHCC Man Meal at the house Thursday. Looking for a lot of feedback from the fellas. Wrapping first - in a slightly different liquid. Standard rub though. We'll see how it goes. Sauce is money - no need to tinker with that. Looking forward to it.

Chicken Practice

Last night I cooked chicken again. I am trying a technique right now that works really well to tenderize the skin. What the judges are looking for is a "bite through" skin. From all the research on the internet and research I've done myself, high heat is the way to get this bite through skin. The last three times I've tried this I've used my homemade hickory charcoal and got the temperature in the grill up to about 500 degrees before putting the chicken on. Last night I was rushed and I only let the temp get to about 400 before putting it on. The temp was staying around 350 - 400 so I thought it would be ok. But when I took it off 45 minutes later the internal temp of the chicken was only around 165. While this is technically done it wasn't where I wanted it. It looked pretty good, but the internal temp was too low. So I decided to stoke the fire and put it back out there. I left it alone for about 10 - 15 minutes, when I went back the fire was at 550 and the chicken was black and crusty. Destroyed. Not a good night for me. I was very disappointed.

So about 9:00 I decided I had to try again Saturday. So I went to Publix got some more thighs and prepped them. I was cooking pork today anyway so I put the thighs on the smoker and then the grill. Once again I left them unattended for just a few minutes and sure enough they turned black again. This time only half of them were burned so I was able to try the others and they were pretty good. I still need to tweak my times by a few minutes, but I think I'm getting closer to where I want to be with the chicken.

Chicken and Pork

The Pork turned out pretty good. The cut of meat was not great so the muscle where we get the slices from was small and a little fatty. The chicken turned out really good. I'm really pleased with it. One thing that needed work was the size and form of it. Other than that the chicken was good. The sauce we are using now is really good. Even though we think it should be against the rules to sauce in competitions everyone does it and we have to as well to be competitive.

Pork and Chicken Practice

Practicing pork butts and chicken today. Trying a new timing technique. I did not apply a rub today because I didn't have any made up for the pork. I'll post pictures and reports after it gets done.