Kansas Winter Q - Great Bend, KS

As I loaded up and prepared for the 2nd Annual Kansas Winter Q in Great Bend, I wondered to myself several times if this was really a good idea. With forecasted temps in the teens and possible rain and/or flurries in the area, to say cooking championship BBQ in those elements would be a challenge is an understatement.

But we went anyway. The call to compete again was too strong and even a few set backs leading up to the contest could not keep Chris and I away. In fact my wife, Jammie, and my little monster, Jack, came along as well. I always like having them around at a contest.

Sure, the weather was a major factor in deciding if we should make the four hour drive to Great Bend, but when you take into account the planning and effort that organizer Kent Romine puts in the event, you know you will be well taken care of when you enter the gates of the Barton County Fair Grounds.

We knew that we would arrive at the contest late, but a call to Kent had us right on track as soon we arrived. Chris had to put in a longer day at work than he had originally planned, and I was running behind as usual anyway. We hit the I-70 around 3:00 in the afternoon and, after a few potty breaks for Jackson along the way, we rolled in to town around 7:15pm. That is officially our latest contest arrival time yet.

One of the many unique parts of this event is that you can choose to set up outside (burrrr), or you can take advantage of the offer to set up your working area inside of a nice, big and warm expo building, with your cooker just steps outside the door. Our earlier call to Kent paid off as he had saved us a prime spot for our smoker and great area inside the building for our tables.

Arriving late did mean that we had to sacrifice taking part in much of the other cool stuff happening on Friday Night. There was an appetizer contest and everything we saw looked great. We took part in this last year and it really is fun. There were also some real, live auctions going on too. Not your typical fund-raising silent auction stuff, but honest to goodness auctioneers and ring men pushing bids. And they were bidding on the teams in the contest! There was one auction to sell off donated pork butts that we were to cook and have ready on Saturday Morning.

There was another auction to distribute the teams for the Calcutta contest with-in a contest that Kent set up. Teams were bid on with the hope that they would place 1st, 2nd or 3rd in any category or in the overall so their “owner” could cash in on the purchase. It was a pretty interesting way to get side action going in the contest and I think it put a little extra pressure on some of the teams too.

Despite the weather, we actually stayed pretty much on track with our cook. I heard that it got down 15 over night and I believe it. We were checking our fire every 45 to 60 minutes and every time I went outside, all I could hear was the rumble of diesel engines idling as a lot of guys choose to sleep in their pickups with the heater on. We had the smoker set up inside a tent and we used our insulating blankets to hold temp and the cooker performed just as we are accustomed to. As usual, a few cuts came off a little early, some stayed on a little longer, but come morning we were in good shape.

Jammie and Jack spent the night in our little tent. I pitched it close to our working area and we both fought Jack for a couple hours in the middle of the night as he refused to go to sleep or lay still. I am not sure if it was harder keeping our fire going or keeping him down. But it caught up with him later as he took a nap for a few hours come mid-morning.

Several teams contributed to a nice Saturday Morning breakfast, which kicked off the beginning of crunch time for us. Chicken went on, then everything came off. We put our boxes together and Chris ran them in, just barely beating the clock more than once…in fact he was the last one to the window three times.

We were happy to hear our names called three times at the awards: 9th in chicken, 7th in ribs and 4th for brisket. We also just missed a call in pork, finishing 11th. We were tied for 8th with four other teams, but after tie breakers we finished just out of the money at 11th.

Kent also recognized the top ten and, on the strength of our three calls, I full expected to hear our name called as he started. But he got to number five, and our name still had not been called. I started to think that we just really tanked our pork entry and it cost us. The 5th place team was called, then we were called to stand in front of the group at 4th place. Then Kent explained that teams finishing in the top five are invited back to compete in this summer’s Barton County Fair contest (in July) and next year’s Winter Q at no charge! That was a big surprise to us and a pretty cool prize. I have always wondered why more contests don’t do things like this. Kent Romine really “gets it.”

Great Bend’s local BBQ rock star Kelly Wertz and his 4 Legs Up team finished in the reserve grand spot. Kelly and his family run a BBQ restaurant in town, also called 4 Legs Up, and they are the reigning Jack Daniel’s World BBQ Invitational Champions. Munchin’ Hogs at the Hilton took the top spot as Rob and his crew keep the train rolling after claiming the KCBS Team of the Year title in 2008.

We are pretty happy to have faired so well against such a solid field of teams. I counted it up after we got back home and I think, out of 33 teams in attendance, there were 13 teams there that had won grand championships and another pair that have won reserve grands. It’s a good way to start the year, and we are looking forward to getting back out and cooking again. Next up - the Snake Saturday competition in North Kansas City, March 13th and 14th.

Jack's New Smoker

Last weekend was my son Jackson’s 2nd birthday and he and I were both surprised to see the mini smoker that my brother decided to build for him. Amidst the dump trucks, toddler’s clothes and Cars movie toys, without a doubt, this stood out as my favorite present…I guess I mean his present.

A few months ago my brother, Kurt, and I talked about building a mini sized replica of my big smoker, but nothing really came of it. Then, true to his word, Kurt started putting the project together…about the same time we were leaving KC on Friday. The late start is really nothing new for Kurt.

There are many more stories like this involving my brother. They all pretty much go the same way…he has 6 months to think about a project, he waits until the last moment and when it’s done it looks like he has spent all that time working to make it perfect. I think he once completely remodeled a bathroom in less than 8 hours, simultaneously wrapping up laying the linoleum floor and texturing the ceiling as the door bell rang and the first of my sister-in-law’s guests for a party were arriving to their home.

So my Dad wasn’t all that surprised when Kurt came back from the metal shop with the supplies to put together this little smoker. As I mentioned, he modeled it after the big cooker my Dad built for us to use in competition a few years ago (cooker #000001). You can see the general similarities between the too. I was blown away when I saw it being put together in the shop. Kurt did a great job of representing the larger cooker in his work and my Dad helped add a few final touches like the smoke stack dampner, which works just like the one on my stack.

After a fresh coat of high temp paint Saturday afternoon, cooker #000002 rolled out of the shop at the Dodge County Smokers assembly headquarters on Sunday Morning, February 1st.

Jack was excited for his new custom cooker. When his present was rolled in to the living room after he opened all of his other presents, he ran over and lifted the lid right away. Then he told his cousins “HOT! No touch!” I guess he does listen to his mom & dad when the smoker is going outside.

We got home Sunday night in time to see the end of the Super Bowl and on Monday we wasted no time in lighting the first fire. It took a couple minutes and about 15 coals and a few sticks of wood to get the chamber up to 250 degrees. We cooked a hotdog, which Jack ate for a pre-dinner “naaaack” (that’s a snack, by the way).

We’ll spend some more time learning how to cook on our new “toy” and hopefully we can bring it out to a few contests this summer where you can see it in person. It really is cool!

See more pictures here: Dodge County Smokers.com

Butcher BBQ: New Sponsor for '09

With the start of the 2009 competition season here in the Midwest just a few weeks away, we are proud to welcome a new sponsor on board for the Dodge County Smokers BBQ Team. We will join a select assembly of competition teams supported by Butcher BBQ of Chandler, OK.

David Bouska is the head cook of the Butcher BBQ Team. He also owns and operates David’s Processing, a small meat processing plant in Central Oklahoma, so it goes with out saying that this guy knows his stuff. More than 25 years of working in meat markets and plants gave David the know-how to produce some very good products. And we’re not talking about rubs and sauces here…these are specific marinade and injection blends that really do make a difference if producing flavorful, juicy, tender beef and pork.

Actually, using Butcher BBQ products will be nothing new for us. We started using David’s brisket marinade not long after it was introduced and added the pork injection a few months after that. It was part of our arsenal for the entire 2008 season and we are looking forward to upholding the high standards set by Butcher BBQ.

I am a real believer in this stuff. Case in point: In 2007 brisket was our worst category. In 2008 (after we started using Butcher) it was our best, helping us snag 7 Top 5 finishes. And our pork was equally impressive, helping us win 2nd place in whole hog, 3rd in shoulder and 4th overall at the World Pork Expo’s BBQLossal. For even more winning examples, including David’s first place pork entry at last year’s Jack Daniel’s Invitational, visit the Butcher BBQ Winners Circle.

Competition and backyard cooks alike can benefit from checking out the brisket and pork marinades from Butcher BBQ. Check out the website: http://www.butcherbbq.com/.

Winter Ribs on the Weber

This weekend is my son Jack’s 2nd birthday, which this year, happens to coincide with my cousin’s wedding. So this weekend we’ll be heading north for a short drive to Nebraska. We’ll take in the wedding on Saturday and have a birthday dinner and some cake on Super Bowl Sunday with Jack’s Nana and Papa along with my brother and sisters and their collective families.

In preparation for this fine family feast I decided to burn some ribs. Only one problem…it will take at least 6 racks of spares to feed everyone and my big cooker is up at my Dad’s shop getting some off season work done (we’ll be pulling it back home on Sunday). My only means of cooking these ribs will be on my standard Weber grill. And I decided early on that I am NOT doing this twice. It will be all 6 racks at once or we’ll just settle for something else.

I never use those vertical rib racks…unless I’m squeezing 6 racks of spares into a space that should hold about 2. But I knew I had a few of things around somewhere…

Now I find that my wife doesn’t complain (as much) about all of my BBQ stuff if I keep it spread out. Kind of like a kid who tries to make it seem like he has eaten more off of his dinner plate by knocking down that pile of peas and hiding some of those carrots under a mangled piece of pot roast. So I have a stash of stuff in the garage, another in the basement and some stuff under the deck in the back yard…oh and some other stuff in the shed out back. The true beauty of my plan is that you can’t see one pile of stuff from any other pile. So when she asks, I just tell her “Oh yeah…that’s the stuff from the garage. I brought it out back yesterday.” It all looks the same to her.

Back to the subject at hand: rib racks. I checked the garage and couldn’t find them there. Out back in the shed? Nope. In the basement? Bingo!

Now I’m ready to cook. I trimmed the spares down just a little and seasoned them with some of The Slabs "Perk Up Your Pork" rub. It was about 15 degrees out and snowing (albeit lightly) when I started cooking on Tuesday morning. But I knew the Weber would hold the heat fine. I threw one chunk of hickory and one cherry on the coals and dropped the lid. It took a little negotiating to get the lid on tight with the ribs sticking up, but it all worked out.

With such a big load I knew it would take a little longer than usual to get everything done so I planned for 4 hours before I would wrap them in foil. The Weber cruised between 250 and 300 the whole time. I wasn’t too concerned about the temp swings or the fire getting too hot. I never really worry about that when I cook at home. About 2 hours in, I flipped the ribs over and rotated their positions in the rack to make sure they cooked as evenly as they could.

A couple hours later I wrapped them in foil and stacked them up in a pan to. They turned out pretty good. Since we aren’t eating them until Sunday, I vacuum sealed them and put them in the freezer and I’ll reheat them in Mom’s oven. I made some mac & cheese and a roasted red potato salad with smoked bacon for sides. It should be a good Super Bowl meal…except we’ll be on the road back home by kick-off.

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!