Finally, a 2008 Wrap Up...

It’s been awhile since I have logged a post here, and I figured as Chris and I put together our 2009 competition schedule, that I better at least put a little effort into a wrap up of 2008. So here it is…

We had a great year. In fact, I am not sure that we can do much better! We had a lot pretty cool moments in 2008. Competing in the Butt to Butt Invitational in Shannon, IL (and finishing 3rd) was awesome. Then turning around and winning a Reserve Grand Championship in the KCBS contest the next day was just a great feeling. Being awarded 5th place in Pork at the American Royal Invitational was pretty cool and winning a Reserve Grand in Fairbury with our friends finishing at the top with us was a lot of fun too.

But the highlight of the year had to be our two Grand Championships. First I have to explain that I live in Mission, KS and Chris lives just south of Lansing, KS (even though his address says Leavenworth). So Mission and Lansing are our two “home town” contests. So what are the odds of us winning those two events? Probably pretty slim, but we did just that. It’s pretty cool to open up the paper in your town and see a picture of yourself with the grand champion trophy. It one thing to see that stuff in publications and websites dedicated to BBQ, but when your neighbors and coworkers see it and say “congrats,” well, that's pretty cool. Organizers and contest officials seem to really like the fact that a team from their town won their contest as well. We’d have to agree.

Also I would like to touch on some of our overall accomplishments for the year. In 2008 the Dodge County Smokers BBQ Team finished in 37th place out of more than 4,000 BBQ competitors who took part in KCBS contests (full results here). In our individual categories, our worst was chicken at 149th place (I happening to be cooking some practice chicken as I type this entry…hmmmm). Ribs seem to have been our most consistent entry since the very beginning and we did well there again, finishing 40th. Brisket was out worst category in 2007. In fact, we only won one ribbon in brisket all year and that was 9th place finish in a 20 team contest. We were able to turn that around (with some help from our friends) and it was actually our best meat last year, finishing 32nd.

We also finished 84th in Pork, but our two biggest Pork wins didn’t even count toward the final points standings. The first one was a 3rd place win at the World Pork Expo’s BBQLossal contest. We teamed up with our buddies from Pork Me Purple to form the Dodge County Purple Porkers, so the points from that win went to that team name. Our 5th place win in the Royal Invite does not count either, as it was not a contest that any team could enter – you had to be invited to compete, therefore making those point exempt from the total count. If those two wins would have counted, it would have put us somewhere in the top 30.

But I digest…these are just numbers and although it’s fun to take a look at websites that track this stuff, what really matters happens at the contests themselves. We performed much better than I thought we would in 2008 and we’ll hope to keep it up ‘09.

The Fountains Blaze Off and Senior Q

After 16 barbecue contests in 2008 stretching from Great Bend , KS to Shannon , IL starting in February and ending last weekend, we wrapped up the year with a fun contest in Independence , MO. It was the Fountains Blaze-Off and Senior Q held for the second year at the Fountains at Greenbriar – an independent senior living community.

We won this contest last year in its inaugural event and we returned this year hoping for a repeat. It didn’t happen for us, but we still had a pretty good time.

Jon and Clara Williams and their family run this event. Jon and Clara compete as Second Line Smokin’ Krew in KCBS contests and they are also KCBS Reps at quite a few contests around the Kansas City area. Jon is also the food service director at The Fountains. He puts this contest on as a tribute to the residents of the facility and most of the teams cooked an extra brisket for the residents to enjoy at dinner on Saturday Night.


Last year we met one of the neighbors named Eva. Steph of The Slabs wrote a real nice article about our new friend Eva that ran in the November 2007 Bullsheet (you can read it here). Our cook site was literally in her back yard both last and again this year. Eva was back again (see her picture with Steph). She watched us for nearly the whole contest out of her back door and came over for a few visits, but she declined a shot of Gentleman Jack, so Chris and I had to share with Kyle and Steph (below).

The event itself is very well run. It’s one of the rare contests that we do that is just that…it’s just a contest. There is really nothing else going on at the event except BBQ cooks cooking meat. No bands. No vendors. No expos. No carnival rides. Just cooks. Sometimes that is kind of nice.

I wish I could say that not having any of those distractions helped us cook our best and finish well. We didn’t finish as well as we would have liked and I don’t really have any complaints about that. For the most part, I think we were judged accordingly.

It was a strong field of cooks, with 28 teams competing. I think 11 or 12 of those teams have won a grand or reserve grand championship this year. We've made a lot of good friends in that group from cooking at many of the same contests together, so it was fun to cook the last one of the year with many of our BBQ friends like Squeal of Approval, D-Dons Pit Crew, The Slabs, Early Bird BBQ and many more, including a few teams that weren't cooking, but just stopped by for a visit. We were looking forward to the competition and the chance to end on a high note, but we ended up placing 14th overall.

Our one bright spot from the awards was an 8th place call in Chicken. That felt pretty good.


Chicken has been a struggle for us all year. We tried a new recipe for the first time in the Mission , KS contest a few weeks ago. We missed out on a call in the bird category that day, but it didn’t hurt us as we still won the contest. We cooked it again at the American Royal and just missed out on a ribbon in the Invitational and finished somewhere in the middle of the pack in the open. That’s still OK. I liked our chicken last weekend. I thought it was good enough for a call, but I also thought it could have been a little better. I was pleased with the award (only our second of the year), and knowing that we have some room for improvement is also encouraging.

On the other hand, I was miffed by our ribs. We cooked them the same way as we usually do. Neither Chris nor I liked the results. I thought they tasted dry, Chris thought they lacked the “pop” they usually have. Either way you go, it showed in the results.

Our brisket seemed like it could go either way. I was holding out hope that, even though I knew it wasn’t the best it could be, that we’d still get a call. No such luck. We didn’t really deserve it anyway. It’s wasn’t a bad product to in, but it was not the best we could do either. We knew that when we sampled it before turn in.

Pork was actually the category that I think Chris and I both thought we had the best chance in. I guess that’s the kiss of death as we finished 15th. Everything seemed to turn out just right for us in that category. From start to finish, it was on schedule and tasted great. The box looked good and I can say that the entry itself was every bit as good as our 5th place pork in the Royal Invitational. So that was a little disappointing.


Munchin' Hogs at the Hilton claimed the top spot and the Early Family of Early Bird BBQ landed as reserve grand champs. One of the residents at the Fountains made the grand and reserve grand trophies in a ceramics class and Rob from Munchin' Hogs and our buddy Chris from Early Bird had the opportunity pose with the young lady who made them. Rob's GC trophy was even filled with cookies!

Finishing 14th in a 28 team contest was not the way that we wanted to end the year. That said, we still had the most successful year of competition in our short run so far. We cooked more than ever before with 16 contests and we won more than ever before. I think there is a direct connection there. The more you cook, the better you get, the more you win. We’ll be back at next year. I plan to maybe work on a season recap too to post here too.

The American Royal

The Royal came and went. It was a long weekend for us and we cooked some good food. We also turned in some stuff that we didn’t think was quite up to our standards…but that was bound to happen as we’ve had a pretty good run leading up to this one.

We have traditionally gotten beat up by the judges pretty bad at the Royal in the open contest. Seems the more experience we have and the better we get, the worse we finish in Royal Open each year.

Our first year out there we had no idea what we were doing. We finished in the 190’s overall and had top 100 finishes in two categories. Since then it’s been a steady decline into the abyss, culminating with a finish in the low 300’s last year. Well, we must be back to our first year form in 2008, but we still just can’t crack the top 200 as we finished 201st.

Our brisket, which has been our best category all year, was awful. True to form, it was our best scoring product. Awesome!

But we still had a great time and we did do pretty good in the invitational. It’s a goal to be in the American Royal Invitational every year for us and this was our second go ‘round in that dance.

We improved on our ’07 Invitational finish, ending up in 17th place this year (100 teams). We just missed calls in chicken and ribs (22nd and 20th places) but did score a nice ribbon for 5th place pork. That was a real accomplishment for us in that field of cooks…the best of the best, with every one of those teams having won a grand championship in the past year. Our brisket pulled us down, finishing 76th, but I can’t say that I disagree with that. It was not the same product we have been turning in lately. The judges got that one right.

We have already qualified for the 2009 American Royal Invitational, so we’ll be back to take another crack at it next year. But until we hear our name called for a ribbon in the American Royal Open - in any category, I think we will always feel like our list of accomplishments, however large or small, will be incomplete. In fact, as I am writing this, I decided to check the sausage results…that was the one ancillary category that we entered. The result: 59th! We’re getting closer!

Getting Ready for the Royal

Getting ready to cook a BBQ contest takes a lot of work. The more we compete, the more streamlined it becomes, but there are some things that have to be done and you just can’t cut corners with that stuff. This week it's time to get ready for the big one...The American Royal.

We probably spend 10 to 15 hours the week before a contest getting ready. That includes shopping, checking off to-do lists, packing supplies, trimming meat, double checking to-do lists and getting the cooker ready for competition.

Part of getting the cooker ready means cleaning. I clean every part of our smoker inside and out before every contest. Once I cleaned it the day after a competition, but I learned that doesn’t work very well. If I fire up again between that day and the next contest, it just gets dirty, greasy and grimey again. Probably not as dirty, greasy and grimey as it does after a full contest, but I need to have that extra clean feeling to know that the cooker is ready for the challenge ahead.

We cook ribs, pork butt and brisket in the smoker in competition. Ribs…not that messy. Pork and brisket…messy. BBQers know these are cuts loaded with fat and can lose as much as half of its raw weight when that fat renders. And it renders all over the grates, drips down onto the tuning plates and settles in the bottom of the cook chamber. After a cook, it’s black, it’s thick and it’s gross. (This picture was taken at one contest when it was still cold outside...I accidently forgot to close my drain valve under the belly of the chamber and the result was this 12" tall stalagmite of grease and fat...
YUMMY! I am glad it wasn't warm...that would have been a mess!)

As usual, we had the cooker clean and ready to go for our last contest in Mission. We did the normal routine, then went home Saturday afternoon and threw another 85 lbs of meat or so in the smoker for a catering gig we had later in the week. Four butts and five briskets went on around 6pm and came off the next morning. After cooking for a contest then turning around and loading it back up again, a huge mess was left behind in the cooker.

Yesterday I started the process of getting ready for the American Royal.

Earlier this summer we received a few sample bottles of Greased Lightning all purpose cleaner in a goody bag at a contest. I used up a couple of those little samples on various things and we’ve got a bottle in the closet at home, so I know it’s good stuff. Then, a few weeks ago, I was talking to Rod Gray from Pellet Envy. Rod is sponsored by Greased Lightning and offered me some free product. I jumped on the free stuff and today I put it to use.

My normal routine is to get as much of the solid stuff out of the cooker first, then finish with a visit to a car wash. I got rid of the big stuff with a putty knife then a wire brush, scraping the grates and tuning plates inside. During a contest or other long cook, we’re bound to collect some grease and ash in a few spots on the exterior of the cooker. The exterior only gets worse when stuff inside flies out as I’m cleaning it.

After a few long cooks then sitting and settling for a week before I got to it, that Greased Lightning did wonders on the tough, built up gunk, grease and ash. I gave it the initial once over in the drive way and scraped and scrubbed a bunch of stuff away. Then I went to the car wash.

It was early in the evening on Sunday and I noticed a group of guys standing around a pick-up in the parking lot of the hotel across the street from the wash bay. When I started to get ready to wash, I noticed them making their way over. An immediate feeling of dread overcame me. I knew a guy that was once held up at a car wash. But the closer these guys got, the less scary they seemed.

Turns out they were just a bunch of guys in town from Central Wisconsin for the NASCAR race at the Kansas Speedway. They were capping off their day with a few cold ones in the parking lot and they thought my smoker looked cool so they came over to check it out.

I filled them in on how it worked and what I used the smoker for…contests and cooking at home, etc. They were a great bunch of guys, really nice and respectful…but still having a lot of fun after watching a great race that day.

The cooker’s clean and ready for action…The next task at hand will be buying meat, garnish and supplies for the invitational and open. My job really gets in the way of my hobby sometimes.

Grand Champs: Battle of the Brisket - Mission, KS

I spent the last week leading up to the Battle of the Brisket in Mission, KS really looking forward to cooking again.

Two weeks ago Chris and I scored a reserve grand championship in Fairbury, NE. That competition kicked off a string of contests for us where we’ll cook every other weekend leading up to the American Royal and beyond. That is a pretty frequent pace for our team, but it’s our hope that we can really hit our stride and do well as we approach the big one.

With that reserve grand champ finish in Nebraska we were off to a good start, but Chris and I both felt that we could have performed better and there was plenty of room for improvement. We took good step toward being where we want to be last weekend in Mission as we finished on top of the heap at a 57 team contest – by far our biggest win.

It was more than four years ago when I got the mail one afternoon and opened up the city newsletter that’s sent to every household in town. I saw one little article about a small, unsanctioned contest being held at the Sylvester Powel Community Center, which stood less than three blocks from my front door. It was the perfect first foray in competition barbecue for me and my little smoker. My neighbor, Chris, showed up and gave me hand and we scored a 4th place ribbon in brisket that weekend…the rest is history.

Fast forward a few years later…last year the city decided to hold another contest at the same location and this time it was sanctioned by KCBS. We jumped right in and even ended up in the same spot we had that first time out. We lucked out and finished in the reserve grand champion slot and we could not have been happier! That is, until we finished in first place!

I can’t say enough about the Mission Arts & Eats Festival and Battle of the Brisket contest. I am really very proud to call this my (adopted) hometown contest. I think the coolest part about the contest was the attention they gave to recycling. There were receptacles every where you turned for cans and plastic bottles. They even sponsored a contest with-in the contest, offering $50 to the team who turned in the most recycled materials (by weight) at the end of the weekend. I wish more contests would do this. We end up throwing away so many plastic bottles and aluminum cans, just because we have nothing else to do with it.

Because the contest is so close to home and my office, I ran down and set up our spot over the lunch hour. I worked almost a full day and got back down to the contest in time to get ready for our guests on Friday night. We had a nice crowd and much food was consumed and many beers drank. It was a lot of fun.

Unlike a few of our most recent contests, Chris and I stayed pretty much on track as far as our timeline went. Trimming, injecting, marinating and seasoning all happened right on time. The evening weather was perfect, allowing our cooker to perform just as we expect and all of our categories went on and came off the smoker on time.

We both had that uneasy feeling as mid-morning came and went...nothing had gone wrong. We've had that feeling before. If nothing goes wrong during the contest, then it must mean it's gonna happen at the awards.

Our chicken was OK. We are trying to achieve a few things with that entry and I thought we did them all - just not as well as we could. Ribs were not quite there in my opinion. The presentation was lacking a little. Pork came out pretty good and our brisket was also good. Overall I thought we had a decent chance at getting some calls.

We collected awards in three of four categories at the awards ceremony. We just can’t seem to nail down our chicken. Our last chicken call came back on May 3rd in Lansing, KS. It’s been a pretty dry spell since then, but I think we’re improving. We did score a fourth in ribs, third in brisket and second in pork and it all added up to a Grand Championship on this weekend!

Little Blue BBQ - Fairbury, NE

This is just the type of competition I like. It’s a small contest in a small town. The prize money is pretty small too, but we’ve never been into chasing the big scores anyway, so that hasn’t ever mattered much to us. It’s just a nice place with a nice feel and we’ve always done well there.

Back in 2006, Dodge County Smokers scored a Grand Championship here and last year we finished fourth. We were really looking forward to the trip up this year and we were primed for strong finish.

Last year we recruited my brother-in-law, Eric, to cook chicken and ribs as a separate team, just in case the contest needed him to reach the 25 team “qualifier” mark. Eric chose the name Czechland Smokers, a tribute to his polka-dancing, beer-drinking, kolache-eating heritage.

Eric was back this year with his Bohemian buddy, Doug, set up right next to us - and this year they went all in, cooking in all four categories. Last year he did pretty good, scoring Top 10 finishes with both of his entries. This year Chris and I brought the meat, rubs and sauce for him and he supplied a couple of modest smokers along with some seasonings of his own. We put a plan together for cooking his brisket, pork, ribs and chicken and Czechland Smokers were off and cooking!

Set up on the other side of our tent was Pork Me Purple …that’s our buddy Jerrod and his dad, Bill. Last month Jerrod was looking for one last contest to cook for the year and I threw out the possibility of him coming up to this one. It worked out with his schedule and we were happy to have him along side of us. We even co-hosted a good sized Friday night feed complete with some awesome rib eye steaks and really good smoked sausage from Jerrod. We cooked a pretty damn good pork loin and we had loads of great sides too. It was a great meal and a very fun evening.

The cooking part of the weekend went pretty smooth. I had a few time & temp mistakes, but nothing that we haven’t run into before. It got COLD too! We had all of the sidewalls up on the tents and we keep it above 65, but it was chilly every time we’d step outside.

When it came time to box our entries, Chris and I each took turns running over to Eric and Doug’s tent to give them an idea of how to arrange their meat in the box. I have to say that from what I saw, they did an excellent job on their presentations.

I felt pretty good about our brisket entry. I thought pork and chicken were OK and our ribs just didn’t have the pop we are used to getting out of them…although they were still good. But what we think about the product doesn’t make any difference. It’s all about the judges’ scores.

The top six in each category were recognized at the awards, and we did OK with a 2nd place brisket and 3rd place pork. I was hoping for a chicken and a rib call as well, but it wasn’t going to happen for us this day. I may have been more excited to hear Czechland Smokers’ name for 2nd place pork. What was that? They beat us?! I have to say we were pretty proud of those guys. They worked hard and I hope they had fun.

Pork Me Purple also came up big with huge 1st place chicken call and when it was all said and done, Jerrod snagged the very cool Grand Championship trophy!

Chris and I didn’t do so bad ourselves, earning a Reserve Grand Championship, but the surprise of the day may have been the 3rd place overall finishers…

At the conclusion of the awards, we all took our place in line to get the results and scores on paper. Chris grabbed ours and Eric took his. We all walked back to our seats and Eric flipped open the overall scoring page and started looking for their name, reading from the bottom of the 25 team list and going up. As he was reading closer and closer to the top of the page he said “I think they forgot about us…”

That’s when Doug looked over his shoulder and pointed near the top of the page. I’ll be damned if those guys didn’t take 3rd place! And they finished just three points behind us too! Eric seemed pretty stunned.

That strong 3rd place showing meant we all finished the contest in the order we were lined up. I guess it was a “Winner’s Row” of sorts, with Jerrod set up to on our west side and Eric and Doug on the east side. 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Pretty cool!

BBQ on the River - Excelsior Springs, MO

A few years ago this was one of our first KCBS sanctioned contests. It was also the first time we cooked on our current smoker…The first (and only) Dodge County Smoker to roll off the assembly line. My Dad pulled it down from Nebraska and we never even had the chance to practice on it. It probably didn’t matter much. We would have sucked on that or any other cooker back then.

But I digest…

It’s always fun to go back to Excelsior Springs. It’s a contest that is well supported by the community and they have a strong contingent of area teams every year from the Clay and Ray County area, which I always think is cool.

The competition is tough too.

Any number of the 68 teams in attendance could have won this contest and the field was stacked with names who have visited the stage to accept grand championships numerous times.

We were once again set up next to our good ‘ole pals, The Slabs.com. Steph, Kyle and Val are always a blast to hang with and talk to. I even got some gratis baby-sitting services out of Valerie when she took Jackson for a walk on Friday evening, allowing me a couple of free moments to finish setting up our camp, as we arrived after 5pm. Chris was even later than I was in getting there, but we had no problem in setting up and getting our meat prepped on time.

Dinner was a treat as we participated in a Friday night pot luck with more than a dozen other teams up at the Boys Night Out camp. Everyone brought Mexican food and it was great! Chris made some killer Spanish rice and there was all sorts of other good stuff to choose from on the buffet line as well.

After dinner it was back to HQ to finish up prep work and get our big cuts on the cooker. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful and the weather was cool, maybe even a little chilly – but we’ll take it over the hot days and nights we’re used to when cooking in the middle of August. The rain also stayed away and weather-wise, it turned out to be just a perfect weekend.

Saturday brought another great day with the sun shining and temps in the 70’s. We started the morning off right with a world class breakfast back the Boys Night Out camp. Bacon, eggs, biscuits & gravy and more. It was all fantastic.

After breakfast we got down to business, getting boxes ready and sticking to our rigid competition plan. Turn-ins came and went and we were happy, but not ecstatic about our food. We packed up pretty quick and had about an hour to kill before the awards at 4:00, so we kicked back and stayed cool in the shade of the buildings on Broadway Street in downtown Excelsior Springs.

The awards kicked off and we saw a steady stream of solid teams making their way up to the stage to claim their awards. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t one of them. After not hearing our name through 3 categories, I had pretty much accepted that we were going to be in for a disappointment when we got a look at the score sheet.

I was blown away when I heard our name for first place brisket. Turns out we also took 5th place overall in the contest, and a not-so-great performance turned out to be pretty good. We improved on our chicken (which we have been consistently tweaking from week to week) and ended up just out of the top ten in ribs and pork with an 11th and 14th place respectively.

We were able to come home with a little money in our pocket and we’ll be getting ready for our next run up to Fairbury, NE for the Little Blue BBQ contest the first weekend in September.