What's in a Name?

Every once in a while when we're at a contest someone will ask us what's up with that line "& the Sue Dog Smokin' Crew" near the bottom of our competition team banner.

Does our team really include a legion of culinary trained canines all named Sue?

No.

Sue is my dog. When I entered my first BBQ contest, I couldn't think of a name for my team. So I named the team after my dog. I think the first name I used was Smokin' Sue's BBQ. We cooked in 6 contests that first summer. I used some combination or variance of the words Smoke and Sue in almost all of them. In addition to Smokin' Sue's, there was Sue Dog's BBQ and then Sue Dog's Smokin' Crew. I could never quite settle on a name that I thought fit just right.

Toward the end of our first year, I entered a contest in West Point, Nebraska - just a few miles from my hometown in Dodge County, Nebraska. My Dad knew a local beef producer, who also held a seat on the Dodge County Cattleman's Board, and a sponsorship for that contest in West Point sounded like a good possibility. So I entered as the Dodge County Smokers BBQ team.

Well, the sponsorship fell through, but not before another friend of Dad's made me a banner that said "Dodge County Smokers and the Sue Dog Smokin' Crew." Now I had already entered another contest happening after this one, so I asked the guy to include that Sue Dog line on the banner when I learned he was making it. That way I could use it at both contests. It was kind of an ugly banner. It was yellow and had blue and red letters. But it was free and I was happy to have it. By the way, I think it was free because the guy was using up banner materials that no one else would pay for.

Now that we had a banner (no matter how ugly), I didn't want to pay for another - and the Dodge County name was starting to grow on me anyway...plus the name kind of paid tribute to where I grew up and also the smoker that my Dad had just built around that time. So the name stuck...and so did that Sue Dog line.

When we designed our current logo, we kept Sue in there and we finally retired that ugly yellow banner last year. Sue still comes to the occasional contest, but more often you'll find a little Sue Dog look-a-like hanging in our tent at a contest. BBQers are full of superstitious little quirks...I guess that's one of ours.

North Kansas City

Our second contest of the year was in North Kansas City. It was our third time cooking this one and this contest has had a few organizational problems in the past. This year they moved locations and fixed a few other issues and put together a pretty solid event. It's a shame the weather wasn't a little better.

With the new location the sites were all centrally located around Finnegen's, a bowling alley and event center in Northtown. This put us all closer to cleaner restrooms and it allowed them to hold the cook's meeting and awards indoors as opposed to outside as in years past. We also got a our full results print out instead of waiting for them to be posted online. There were some other issues with alcohol consumption that were worked out with NKC officials as well - which is good because I like to drink beer.

After braving the cold, wind, rain and snow we got everything turned in on time - but just barely...I took way too long on our pork & brisket boxes but Chris literally ran our boxes in just in time and in the end we faired pretty well - finishing first in ribs and ending up fourth overall. I was a little disappointed in our pork score as I thought it was pretty good. Chicken was OK. We tried a new recipe and it will need some tweaking, but we are on the right track. Brisket continues to weigh us down. We actually scored better than I thought we would, but I think it was just luck.

All in all it was a good weekend...we got to hang out with our ol' pals The Slabs and took in a few of the Big XII Basketball tournament games over at Pork Me Purple's site (nice brisket call, Jerrod), had a nice dinner with fam and friends on Friday, then we got a surprise visit from my buddy Officer Jon Going and we even came home with a little bit of money, which will help us keep feeding our BBQ habit.

Butt to Butt X Teams Announced

The cooking teams that will compete in the 2008 Butt to Butt(c) Invitational were recently announced in the March issue of the Kansas City Bullsheet. We are excited beyond words to be part of this group of fantastic teams! Cookers like Johnny Trigg of Smokin' Triggers (pictured with his wife, Trish after his Butt to Butt win in 2007) and Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson's are legendary on the competition circuit and you will be hard pressed to find better competition cooks than Bad Byron of ButtRub.com and Rod Gray of Pellet Envy...hell, every team in this group is threat to take home a Grand Championship every time they fire up their pit!

The Butt to Butt Invitational is a truely unique event...Every July for the past ten years, cooking teams from nine different events across the country and the Pork Team of the Year have all been invited to Shannon, Illinois (pop. 900) for the opportunity to cook and turn in one category and one category only: pork butt. Every year the winner scores a cash prize and a handsome plaque, but the most coveted prize is the boar's tooth that contest organizer Mike Lake personally harvests.

Here are the 2008 Qualifiers and the event at which they each qualified:

(which one of these teams doesn't belong?)

Wild Bunch Butt Burners....BBQ & Blues Challenge; Hammond, LA

Pellet Envy........................Capitol City Cookoff; Jeff City, MO

Dodge County Smokers......Great American BBQ Invitational; Kansas City, KS

Weekend Smokers..............Iowa St. Championship; Marshalltown, IA

Smokin' Triggers.................Butt to Butt IX Winner; Shannon, IL

Chi-Town Smokers.............Illinois St. Championship; Shannon, IL

J-Mack Cookers.................Amazin' Blazin' Cookoff; Lebanon, TN

Big Bob Gibson's.................American Royal; Kansas City

The Heat Is On....................Jack Daniel's World Championship; Lynchburg, TN

ButtRub.com......................KCBS Pork Team of the Year

These guys are on a whole 'nother level! Chris and I are real proud of our pork and I always feel like we have a chance to win when we turn it in, but we are going to have to really nail it to have a respectable showing in this field. We can't wait to give it a shot!

I should also note that the regular KCBS contest that follows the Butt to Butt competition is one of the most highly regarded contests on the circuit. I have heard nothing but good things about Mike Lake and the top-notch event that he runs in Shannon. We are really looking forward to competing in the Illinois State BBQ Championship and Butt to Butt X on July 10th, 11th & 12th.

Starting the 2008 Season: Great Bend, KS

I was pretty excited when I saw a few posts on the BBQ Forum late last year checking the interest level for a winter contest happening out in Great Bend, KS.

The weekend finally came February 15th & 16th. Chris and I packed up and drove the 4 hours to G.B. where we found the hospitality to be top notch and contest organizer Kent Romaine one of a kind!

This was unique event in that we had the option to set up camp indoors (in 70 degree comfort) while keeping our cooker outside. Quite a few teams choose to stay near their cookers, but a good number set up with us inside too. We were fortunate enough to set up next to our good friends Kyle and Steph from The Slabs.com.

Having our cooker outside and the rest of our stuff inside did prove to be somewhat of a challenge. We are so used to working close to our cooker and had to adapt to having it over a hundred feet away. It's really not that far - but you are used to it being three feet away - well, it might as well be a mile! I had brought our wireless thermometers to monitor the pit temperature, but the distance from the pit coupled with the fact that we were inside the build with the receiver rendered it useless. Thank goodness for our BBQ Guru Pit Minder forced draft control. But we couldn't use that with out incident either...

I had sent my Guru unit in to have problem looked at and got it back the the day before we left. I thought the root of the problem I was having was a burned lead wire on my probe. So I ordered a new one and the problem persisted. After sending it in and not finding a problem, it was shipped back and we set it up to cook - but again we ran into a brick wall. Chris then decided to cut out the burned up spot of the lead, splice it back together and we were in business. So new probe lead was the problem and upon learning this, Fred Jr at Guru headquarters offered to ship me a new one.

Back to the contest...once we got the cooker set up we put a tent up around it to deflect the wind and chilly temps that dipped below 20 degrees over night. We made a few trips out in the cold to check on things and I made the rounds checking out some of the other cooks.

The contingent of cookers at this contest was quite impressive. I have to think that the fact that no other cook-off was happening helped bring in some very successful teams. Chris and I were just hoping to get a couple of calls when the awards rolled around. We have some work to do on our brisket, but we did get calls in ribs and pork. Chicken was middle of the road.

We won't be able to make it back to Great Bend for the contest that Kent puts on in July, but I would highly recommend it based on our experience at the Kansas Winter Q. Oh - and it should be noted that Bart Clark of Twin Oak Smokin' Crew took Grand Champ honors at the contest. His winning score of 691 and change in one of the first contests of 2008, fighting the cold and wind on the plains of Kansas in February, was higher than any winning score put up in all of 2007. Quite an accomplishment.

Who We Are...

written by Neal

The Dodge County Smokers BBQ team was established in the summer of 2005. We are Neal Dunker and Chris Nickelson. By chance we became neighbors in Mission, KS when we moved into houses that had backyards facing each other.

Some time later I entered a BBQ contest just a few blocks away at the Mission Community Center. It was a small, unsanctioned event, but I was in way over my head. Chris stopped by to check it out and visit and ended up staying and lending a big hand. We ended up finishing 4th overall and even scored a 4th place ribbon in brisket. I was hooked on competition BBQ and Chris was ready to jump in too. We formed a team and cooked in five more contests in 2005, even winning a few ribbons along the way.

We had a few team name changes along the way, but settled on Dodge County Smokers - named for the county in Nebraska where I grew up and where my dad, Richard Dunker, designed and built our cooker after attending that first contest in Mission. He figured he could do a better job building a cooker than the others he saw at that contest, and he was right.

I am starting this blog to document our 2008 BBQ season. I am really looking forward to it as we'll be cooking some different events for us and we have qualified for some exciting invitation-only contests. I invite you to follow along. It should be quite a ride.