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Congrats on your 7th place finish . Good luck on your next competition . -
Congratulations! Way to go make it happen! 7 out of 37 is excellent, and you were creating great memories with your family. -
Thank you for posting the update/outcome. I have never gave serous thought to competing but it does have some allure. Sounds like you did great. -
Minnesota in May is now past and we officially have one competition under our belt; the experience was fantastic. We rolled into the event on Friday afternoon at 4PM, just in time to meet up with our assigned pro team for a one-on-one mentoring session; this was the first year the MN BBQ Society did something like this. We had an hour to hang out with them and ask any questions about bbq or the competition that we had. It was nice having an opportunity like this to help settle some jitters, plus it was nice knowing we had a place to turn during the competition if we needed anything or ran into an issue. I hope they continue to do something like this for future new backyard teams.
Friday night I learned my family and I are not tent campers. As we were setting up I noticed there was only one other tent in sight. It appeared all the other backyard teams arriving on Friday night were planning on sleeping someplace other than at the event. My first thought was, "man, they are going to miss out on all the evenings festivities". Well, turns out they were the smart ones in this story. Early May in Minnesota can still be pretty cold. Long story short, I ended up giving my sleeping bag to my wife so she could double bag. I just stayed up and wandered around the event grounds and watch the cookers come to life at various times throughout the night. I haven't been that cold in a long time. I think it was around 2:30 in the morning I found myself making hotel reservations for our next competition.
Saturday, the day of competition started out chilly but once the sun came up things started getting better. The air was filled with bird songs and barbecue smells. Our cook of ribs and chicken started around 8AM, with turn in times of 1:25 and 2:25. Going into this competition our only solid goal was to make our turn in times. Beyond that, I didn't really have any idea what to expect as far as being competitive with our product. I was just cooking what I thought was making good eating bbq. I'm happy to say that we did make both of our turn ins without any issues. In our minds, this was already a successful comp. Once everything was turned in we started cleaning up the site and getting everything packed up; we had an hour and a half before the awards were announced.
The icing on the cake for us came at the awards presentation. We did not get any awards but we were fortunate enough to get a 12th in chicken, 8th in Ribs, and 7th overall. This was out of a field of 37 backyard teams. We are blown away to say the least. I was just hoping we wouldn't be dead last.
All in all this was an awesome experience and we're looking forward to another event in a couple weeks. Our next event is a whole different kind of beast. We'll be cooking the usual ribs and chicken but we're also expected to cook 25lbs. of pork loin to hand out to the public as well as cook a 'surprise category' for judging. I'm a little nervous about this one...Leave a comment:
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I guess I could work that in on my way back to Minnesota. 👍ðŸ»
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