The Maine competition was fun, but exhausting. Every time I leave a two-day competition, I say to myself "never again." That lasts about an hour. Then I start thinking about what we should do differently at the next competition. Harvard will be here before we know it, and this will be the last competition of the year for us.
The organizers of the Maine competition once again did an excellent job, as did the reps Kathie and Leslie. The farm where the event is held is a really nice place to have a competition and, win or lose, I think everyone had a good time. And by the looks of some faces on Saturday, maybe too much of a good time! There are too many people to list here, but it was great to see a bunch of friends and to meet a few new ones.
Without further ado, here is how team Insane Swine BBQ did. Here are the results from the "fun" contests on Saturday...
Chicken Wings People's Choice
For some reason, I forgot how much 10 lbs of chicken wings really is. I totally misjudged how long it would take to cook all of those wings on my kettle grill, and I only got about half of them turned in on time. Plus, some of the wing pieces in my bag were absolutely huge...almost like a chicken leg rather than a wing. Needless to say, I won't be participating in the chicken wing contest next year if they have it again. I struggled with it two years in a row and I'm not going to subject myself to it again. Congratulations to Yabba Dabba Que for cooking the best wings that day.
Iron Chef - Rank: 14/29
This is a contest where they unveiled the secret ingredient a few hours before we had to turn in our entry. We knew it was going to be shellfish of some type since it was sponsored by JPs Shellfish. Last year it was oysters, which totally threw me. I was expecting anything but oysters this year, and thank goodness when it was unveiled it was...LOBSTER. We had a solid lobster recipe, so I was happy with the ingredient. In the end, the dish was a bit undercooked and it showed in our score. I think if we would have had another 10-15 minutes, it would have been perfect and we would have been in the top 5.
Blueberry Dessert - Rank: 8/31
The blueberry dessert came out exactly how we planned it. I couldn't have asked for anything better. It was great to see that 2 of the 6 judges gave our dessert perfect scores. Unfortunately, 2 other judges gave it average and slightly below average scores and that's what affected our overall score and knocked us out of the award contention. As a competitor, you'll go nuts looking at the individual judges' scores. 668899 for taste and 578899 for tenderness? And this isn't like ribs, where you can get ribs from different racks that are completely different. Ok, I'm done. Moving along...
Here is how we did in the "real" KCBS competition on Sunday...
Chicken - Rank 9/43
I'm thrilled with a 9th place finish in chicken! I tried a new technique this time, and it seems to work. This was our best ever chicken score. We'll try it again at Harvard next month and see how that turns out. If we place in the top 10 again, we may just have this chicken thing figured out.
Ribs - Rank 33/43
I'm a tad perplexed here. The ribs were slightly undercooked and didn't have quite as much give to them as I would have liked, but I didn't think they were that bad. I'm not going to change anything for the next competition other than to make sure the timing is right so they are cooked perfectly. The taste was the same as my 3rd place finish in Merrimack last month.
Pork - Rank 6/43
I'm perplexed here too, but in a good way. I thought for sure the pork was overcooked and dry. It's no repeat of our 1st place finish from last year, but I'm really happy with a 6th place finish in pork this year.
Brisket - Rank 33/43
In general, I just really messed up the brisket this time. I know what I did wrong...there were several missteps. It started with selecting a brisket that I knew wasn't the best, but I didn't have the time to go hunting around for a better one. For the next competition, I believe I'll take Thursday and Friday off rather than just Friday. This will give me some more time to prepare and be more selective when it comes to the meats I buy.
Overall - Rank 24/43
Obviously, I'm not happy with our overall ranking. We've been extremely inconsistent this year, so that's something we need to fix going forward. I still consider us a relatively new team since we just started competing in 2008. And this is the first year we have competed in more than 3 competitions. In contrast, many teams compete in a ton of contests each year and have been doing so for 5, 10, or even 20 years. I'm not trying to make excuses, but I think timing and consistency are things that are developed over time. I think our food generally tastes good, and even our appearance scores have gone up this year. Timing has been the issue and that affects the tenderness scores as well. More practice and more competitions will help solve the issues we are having...in time.
So that's it in a nutshell. Again, this was a wonderful event. The organizers and reps really know how to treat the competitors right, and that makes for a great time in Maine!
