Tonganoxie Days BBQ Contest

After the throttling we took at the GAB, Chris and I were both looking forward to cooking again. We had set our sites on the contest in Tonganoxie, KS but when I contacted the organizer I was promptly told they were full. Bummer.

You see, Chris and his wonderful wife, Jenny, recently had a beautiful baby girl named Megan. So we were hoping to minimize the time away from home and cook a nice, low key contest. Tongie fit the bill, as it is just minutes from the front door of Chris & Jenny’s house and it’s one of those great, small town events. So when they called me back to say they were opening up five more spots due to an overwhelming response…well, we jumped on it!

Chris and I both worked a full day before heading up to the contest. This has become a fairly common practice for us. We have become pretty good at rolling in later than usual and getting set up.

Since we got in and set up late, we didn’t have much time to walk around and visit until later in the evening. As we made our way around the grounds, we sized up the competition – 48 teams, and it was stacked! We were set up next to Rubbin’ It and Lovin’ It and they have been very good lately. Jeff from KC Can Crew was there with his trash cans and he’s always tough. Captain Gary and his Bare Bones crew were smokin’ with their WSM’s and just across the row was T’s Smokin’ Pit. Smokin’ Guns were all set up and we spent a good amount of time talking to our friends from the legendary Rib Stars. One thing I wish I would have gotten was a picture of John from Parrothead Smokers’ new Jambo pit. The color of the pit matched his new Ford pickup and it looked sharp! It won’t be long before John has that thing dialed in – lookin’ and cookin’ good!

As for our entries - they were good. Neither of us were all that happy with our chicken, and our ribs were just OK. Chris really liked our pork (and I did too) and I thought our brisket was pretty damn tasty. So it’s only natural that our chicken scored (7th) and we really hit with our “just OK” ribs, nailing down 1st. Of course our brisket and pork both fell to 14th place.

Not hearing our name called in the final two categories was a little hard. I had accepted the fact that we had a pretty good day with the 1st place call in ribs, but didn’t think we had enough for even a top 5. Usually when the top 10 overall places are called out, by the time you get down to Grand and Reserve, there is really little doubt who they are. I wasn’t so sure on that day. I thought we either won it all or finished 20th.

Turns out we won it all…but just barely.

We held on for the win by .0004 of a point over the guys from Burnin’ Down the Hog. Watch out for them…they are knocking on the door of a grand championship and it won’t be long!

We had a great time in Tongie. We are very proud to have won this event – our 6th grand championship in about 50 or so contests, give or take a few. The staff was great, the setting was really nice and the competition was top notch.

We have a new record!

At just 15 days old, Megan June Nickelson is the youngest guest to a Dodge County Smoker’s BBQ contest. Megan and her sister Emily along with Mom, Jenny came to visit Dad (Chris) on Saturday at the contest in Tongie.

Megan is getting her BBQ experience early! She beats out our previous record holder, Jackson Dunker, by 21 days (36 days old at the North KC BBQ in 2007).

Congratulations, Megan! I am sure that your parents are very proud…well, I know that your Dad is, anyway!

All the cool kids are doing it!

While we didn’t do so hot at the GAB, there were a few new members of the team who did.

Every so often my wife Jammie and I invite her cousin’s boys to come and stay the weekend with us. They are a great bunch of kids and we really enjoy them. Even though they are Jammie’s cousin’s kids, it just easier to call them our nephews. Saves a lot of time and words.

Last year our “nephews” Luke and Kyle came down one weekend and it happened to be the same weekend as the Lenexa BBQ contest. Chris and I already had plans to go visit friends of ours at the event and Luke (the older of the two) came along. He had a great time at the contest, eating until he was stuffed, asking lots of questions about cookers and BBQ, and making plenty of new friends.

A few months later Luke and Kyle visited us in Excelsior Springs and once again enjoyed themselves. I knew then that I wanted to get them into a Kids Q contest if they opportunity ever popped up. That turned out to be at the GAB. While time of the contest presented us with some challenges (it happened on Saturday morning, during the Invitational), Chris held down the fort and I helped the boys with their entries.

Kyle (who is 8) competed in the younger age group, cooking a pork chop, and Luke (11) in the older group cooking steak. We practiced our techniques on Friday night, before the contest the next day and both of the boys were really in to it.

On Saturday morning both Luke and Kyle cooking their entries and turned them in. I was proud of them and they were proud of themselves. It was a lot of fun.

I prepared them both before the awards that they may not win anything, but to my surprise Kyle won 4th place for his pork chop! Luke didn’t finish in any of the top spots with his steak (a somewhat shabby piece of beef if you ask me – but that is neither here nor there), but he was just as happy when his name was called for a consolation prize drawing and he quickly hopped up from his seat and ran to the stage to claim four tickets to renaissance festival. Hazzah!

I really had a great time and both of the boys did too. I can see why they do these Kids contests now. It really is a great way to get boys & girls interested in something other than all of the garbage out there that can pollute a kid’s mind.

When Luke told me that he wanted to go home and cook a steak for his Mom, I was pretty happy – for him because he learned something new and exciting, and for his Mom because that boy can grill a pretty damn good steak!

The Great American BBQ (Collapse)

It’s time to play catch up. When last we spoke, Chris and I were gearing up for the Great American BBQ contest. Well…there wasn’t a lot that happened for us worth writing about, which is probably why the recap hasn’t shown up until now.

Chris brought the cooker out on Thursday night to scope out our spot and save us some set up time, allowing us both to work most of the day on Friday. Then we got down to business cooking for the Invitational. We also had an extra brisket on board for the Oklahoma Joe’s World Brisket Open. Our stuff came off in pretty decent shape with the exception of our briskets for the invitational. The taste was solid, but quite honestly, the rest was pretty crappy. Over cooked. Bad presentation. All around pretty poor.

I thought we had a chance for a call with any or all of our other entries. We ended up with two calls, but I’ll only claim one. They gave ribbons down to 20th place - which was nice - but with 44 teams in the Invitational, what is a 20th place call really worth? In our case, it’s worth a yellow ribbon for our pork. Our high point was a 10th place finish in ribs, but we ended up a lowly 35th place overall. Ugh.

The brisket-only contest sponsored by Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ restaurant recognized the top 10 finishing teams, all of whom made a second round cut and had their entries re-judged. We finished 13th, missing the cut by 1.1426 points. That was a good brisket. Maybe the one of the better ones we have cooked in a long time – so that felt good, but it still stung to miss that cut by such a slim margin. Chris Cox and his Brew N’ Bar-B-Que gang claimed the best brisket in the work title (just a couple weeks after taking grand champion in Lansing) and our buddy Doug from Toad Hollar BBQ in Maryville, MO finished a close second.

After the dismal finish in the invite, we regrouped and were re-energized to do well in the open. I’ll spare you the details. We crapped all over the place again. For the second year in a row, we didn’t earn a call. And for the second year in a row, I thought we had decent stuff. But it just wasn’t going to happen for us on this day.

The recovery of the weekend didn’t happen for us. However, it did happen for the Habitual Smokers crew out of Arkansas. They finished one spot below us in the invite at 36th and ended up winning the open, putting the hurt on the rest of the field and winning by 9 points over the next closest team. Those guys are real competitors and have done it before, winning the American Royal and Great American contests in years past.

We did have a good time, enjoying the new venue (Sandstone Amphitheater) and spending some time with our families and a few friends. We be back next year and hopefully we can put together a better performance then!

A Long Overdue Update...

It's been a long time since we have had a new post here...not that anyone has been beating down our demanding updates. Still, I wanted to get a quick recap of our last contest up and preview our upcoming competition as well.

We have been extremely busy the past few weeks, providing BBQ Dodge County style for graduations, first communions, birthday parties, church fundraisers and corporate events. Add to that a couple of contests, the day job and family stuff and that's made for a pretty busy late April/May.

A few weekends ago (May 1/2) Chris and I went to Lansing, KS to a contest that we won last year. We did OK, finishing in the top 5 overall and snagging 4 awards for top ten finishes in brisket (3rd), pork (5th), ribs (7th) and chicken (8th). I would not be telling the truth if I said we were not hoping for a better finish, but 5th is respectable and there was some good competion at this one. Congrats to Chris Cox and his Brew n' BBQ team for a solid win.

This weekend we'll be setting up shop at the Great American BBQ contest. This will be the first time that this event will be held at Sandstone Amphitheater and I am excited to see how it will work out. Chris and I have a few things to grab this week, then we'll be ready to cook. It's acually three contests in one weekend with the GAB Invitational on Friday/Saturday, the open on Saturday/Sunday and the Oklahoma Joe's World Brisket Open happening this weekend as well.

We'll wrap this one up with a few pictures from the Lansing contest. Enjoy!

Prilosec OTC BBQ Shootout

We are finally back from a long and rewarding weekend at the Texas Motor Speedway in Dallas/Fort Worth. We’ve actually been back for several days, but work, sleep and family all needed some extra attention before I could get to an update…but now that I am somewhat caught up, it’s time to fill in the blanks.

As I mentioned late last week, Rod Gray of Pellet Envy asked us to compete for him at this event. Rod is one of the country’s top competition BBQ cooks and also teaches an equally successful cooking class with competition BBQ legend Johnny Trigg. Rod and Johnny’s latest class fell on the weekend of this invitation-only event and prevented them both from attending, so they had to round up a few stand-ins to compete under their banners.

Chris and I were both surprised and honored when Rod made the call asking us if we would be willing to travel to Texas for him. We had been planning on cooking that weekend anyway, but had not yet registered for an event, so it was really an easy decision. We just had a few loose ends to tie up and then we were good to go.

The Prilosec OTC BBQ Shootout is a new series of competitions taking place at NASCAR tracks on race weekends across the country. The events offer a unique experience for race fans to get a little taste of competition BBQ when they visit the track. All of the cooking teams were invited to participate by the event organizers, a combination of marketing folks from Prilosec and SMI Properties, the operators of the speedways involved in the events.

The venue offered a few challenges for some of the teams, especially those who chose to vend their product. Some teams were placed in an area with much higher foot traffic, closer to the judging tables. Most others were a pretty decent hike away from the action. A lot of the concerns of the teams were addressed and resolved in the cook’s meeting, including transportation to turn-in. But the less-than-desirable location offered smaller crowds and the vendors suffered.

In all, 13 teams were part of the competition - and they included some of the best in the country. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated, but we stayed focused and on track and executed our game plan just like we wanted to.

I was most happy with our chicken. It has been struggle for us for a long time now, but I think we are getting closer to a recipe that can help us win. Placing 4th there was a thrill. Chris and I were both happy with our ribs (5th place) and pork (1st place), but there was still room for improvement. Our brisket was good, but Chris and I disagreed on which one of the two we cooked to turn in. In the end we settled on my choice, and we didn’t score with it, so it has been bugging me all week me that we should have went with the other one. Ugh.

Even though our turn-ins began at 11am on Saturday, our awards were not announced until Sunday at 10:30am. A portion of the awards were shown on the Speed channel’s pre-race program Sunday morning. We were not featured on the show, but I hear they are going to play other portions of the awards later on. I don’t have Speed, so if anyone sees anything, let us know!

With the awards happening about 22 hours after the last turn-in, that left a lot of time to just hang out and shoot the breeze (and share a couple of drinks). We got passes into the track and caught the last half of the Nationwide race, after finally getting our area cleaned up. We made our way back after the race, and spent the rest of the night hanging out. We had a great time getting to know a lot of the cooks and teams that we had only briefly met or read about over the years. We opted to stay close to our cook area, while some of the other guys ventured into the infield where a lot of wild parties were going down. Their stories kept us laughing for the next day.

I have lots of pictures posted from the weekend at Dodge County Smokers.com

In all it was a great weekend for us. I can’t thank Rod enough for the opportunity to compete in this event and we certainly wish him the best as he travels and competes in the remaining three BBQ Shootout contests.

Next up for Dodge County is the Blues, Brews & Bar-B-Q contest in Lansing, KS. We won this one last year, so hopefully we can go back and do well there again.

Contest results (overall):

Grand Champion - Twin Oak Smokin' Crew
Reserve Grand Champion - Pellet Envy (Dodge County)
3. Cool Smoke
4. Checkered Pig
5. Lost Gonzo
6. Texas Rib Rangers
7. Lotta Bull BBQ
8. Smokin' Triggers (Jamie Geer)
9. Backstreet Blues
10. It Ain't Prime
11. Jack's Down Home BBQ
12. Wood Chicks
13. Texas Thunder

Next Stop: Texas Motor Speedway

Tomorrow Chris and I will be hitting the road for Fort Worth, TX to compete in a unique BBQ contest being held at the Texas Motor Speedway.

This weekend the first contest in the Prilosec OTC BBQ Shootout Series will take place during race weekend in Texas. Saturday the speedway will play host to the O'Reilly 300 Nationwide Series race and on Sunday, the Sprint Cup Samsung 500.

We'll cook in a small, invitation only event that will feature just a dozen or so teams. Our slot in the contest actually comes courtesy of Rod Gray's Pellet Envy team. Rod will be schooling future BBQ champions in his "Old School vs. High Tech" competion BBQ course this weekend in Shannon, IL, so he offered his spot in this event to us. We'll cook under the Pellet Envy banner for this event and Rod will continue to compete in the remaining series stops through out the rest of the summer.

We are really looking forward to competing in this event. I will try to make some updates as the weekend progresses (if I can find a wi-fi connection at the track). In the mean time, here is the website for the series: http://www.bbqshootoutseries.com/

Note: rumor has it that the awards for the contest will be featured on the Speed channel's pre-race show, Sunday morning at 10:30.