Over 250 competition cook off teams are setting up their smokers at the annual Houston Livestock Show And Rodeo BBQ Cookoff. It’s one of my favorite annual events. I had the previlege of being on a team in the 90s but just a visitor these days! If you ever get the chance to go to this amazing rodeo event it’s well worth the trek !!!
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I bet it’s a whole lot of fun. They have an annual BBQ cook off in Owensboro, Ky that I’m planning on going to this year but not to compete.
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Rodeo? Hmmm. They once had a rodeo in Green Bay one summer. But it was just a little one, the rodeo that is, not the horses. And, there was no cook off.Comment
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Troutman What are the top three things you learned from being a team member that would help a home smoker?
Hope you aren't getting the rain and cold that we are in San Antonio.Comment
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Actually that's an excellent question jlazar. First let me preface this by saying I was by no means a pitmaster out there, just a flunky trying to learn better bbq techniques. There are really two categories that occur, cooking for the masses and competition cooking. I usually worked the former, just cooking tons of food to give to folks who came to our venue. Let me further explain the setup.
The Rodeo event itself is huge, probably 2 million visitors this year alone. They take over all of the NRG Stadium (home of the Texans), the Astrodome, the adjacent huge Reliant Exhibition Center and the entire parking lot(s). Along with the largest rodeo on the circuit (literally the Super Bowl of rodeos with the largest prize purses), they have a giant livestock exhibition and auction. They sell millions of dollars worth of livestock from guinea pigs and chickens to cattle and everything in between for both charity and FFA scholarships. Some 13 year old kid can literally have his or her lamb pay for their entire college education!
On top of that is a giant carnival, nightly concerts from big time artists and of course the cook off that takes up several acres of the parking lot. Each team sets of their own tent with some extremely elaborate. It literally becomes a small town. You can either buy or be given tickets to enter the venues where you can get food, drink and local entertainment. I primarily was on the food providing teams. I remember one year cooking about 5,000 pork steaks, saw them in my sleep for days afterwards!! Most of the comp guys have some smaller pits that they cook on just for their judged submissions. Those are the real pit masters !!
Anyway, back to your question, I would say the transition from cooking large to cooking small in the backyard should bring with it the following for a degree of success;
1) Try to do a good job of fire management. I was cooking on a large stick burner. We would stay up most of the night throwing back beers and chucking splits into the fire box. Maintaining proper temps in the cooking chamber allows for consistent cooking results. Easy to do on an egg or a pellet pooper, harder to do with charcoal or wood.
2) Keep your smoke blue !! Before I learned otherwise, I just thought the more smoke the better, what's the difference? Well as has been preached to all of us, thin blue smoke means a clean fire which sets up ideal smoking conditions for the meat. We learned to keep our splits on top of the fire box to pre-heat them so they wouldn't produce acrid smoke when they were placed in the fire.
3) Learn your cooker and it's cooking zones. I don't remember who made the trailer rig we had at the time, but it had heat plates that allowed channeling of heat and smoke to various points in the cooker. We had a three zone setup whereby when we cooked the pork steaks, as an example, we had a hot sear zone, then transferred to a cooler roasting area, then moved them to a finishing zone where they got sauced and developed crust. That's really no different then the back yard guy, you need to know your cooker and pay attention to your cook. It takes work!!!
Again this entire event as described, is really something to experience. It's not only a lot of fun, but it's living, breathing Texas heritage and history on display once a year !! It's a modern encapsulation of they way it used to be in the wild west.Comment
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That sounds like a lot of fun. Not too many rodeo's or events like this around here as far as I know. The closest thing is maybe the Professional Bull Riding events at Madison Square Garden. They are super fun, but there isn't any BBQ.
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It’s one of the things I miss about living in Houston. Great event!Comment
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