We just finished with the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival.  I haven’t heard how many people were there, but it was pretty packed, and the weather was PERFECT for a festival!  I got there on Saturday at 7:00 AM, and it was crowded by 8:00. 

We didn’t do as much business as we’d hoped, but we did at least cover our costs and then some.  Mostly, we learned a lot.  For instance, we now know that we can get over 400 lbs of meat on our cooker at one time!  We did most of the cook using nothing but wood, which was also a great learning experience.  Regulating temps with wood is a bit different than with charcoal, I think.

Read the rest of this entry »

My wife and I have now used our judging certifications for the first time!  We judged the Madison Ribberfest KCBS sanctioned barbecue competition in Indiana.  The good news was that all the judges were certified judges, which, from what I hear, isn’t very common.  The bad news (not really that bad) was that some judges didn’t show (or call even), so we had to do an extra entry per category. 

Last week, I posted some of my preconceptions, so I thought I’d just reflect on those to see how right or wrong I was, and I’ll add some more observations afterward.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend, I’m, most likely, going to be judging my first KCBS competition.  My wife and I got our certifications in January, and we’ll be using them finally!  I thought I’d kind of document what my thoughts are going into the experience, then compare them next week after having done the judging for real.

Just like any new experience, it will be interesting to see how right or wrong my preconceptions are after this weekend!

Read the rest of this entry »

This week in blogging…  Great start, huh?  I thought I’d do a blog preview of the week, to keep me focused and hopefully keep my readers’ interest!

First off, I submitted my tomato pie entry to "Carnival of the Recipes - The BBQ Edition", and it got included!  This is a feature that can be hosted by just about anyone, but pulls together a topic of recipes.  The tomato pie is included in the side dish part of the entry.  I’ve submitted another entry for an upcoming "Carnival of the Grill"; if it makes it, I’ll post about that, too.

Later this week, I’ll have some info on salmon.  I have generally cedar-planked salmon recently, but I hot smoked some really great salmon, and I’ll talk about salmon in general for outdoor cooking.

I’ll also have my next installment of updates on how I’m doing diet-wise.  Already, I’m noticing a difference in how my pants are fitting!

And I’m preparing for my first judging experience at a KCBS event.  My wife and I will be going to Madison, IN, this Friday to judge Saturday.  The only thing that will change that is whether I can leave my dog overnight… Woody’s having some issues, and I have to be comfortable leaving him with a friend that will come over to watch him.  We’ll see how he’s doing later in the week before I make up my mind.

That’s what I’m planning for this week…  If there are any topics of interest, email me or leave a comment.

Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue only has one more competition for this year (for which we still need to send in our entry fee, but never fear).  With that in mind, we plan to continue including newbies as honorary team members! 

Our last event of the season will be October 20-21, 2006, in Nelsonville, Ohio (SE of Columbus, near Athens).  The event is the Ohio Smoked Meats Festival.  Ed Tobian joined us in July in Grand Rapids, and, Ed, you’re invited along in October, too, but we’re looking for one more person that wants to see what a barbecue competition is all about, from the inside.

Here’s what you’ll get:

• A weekend that you may never forget, even if you never do competitions.  The people involved in barbecue are really second to none.
• An understanding of how everything has to fit together to get entries done at the right time.
• As much barbecue knowledge as you can soak up… not necessarily from us, but barbecuers love to talk, and there’s always time to go see what other teams are doing.
• More food than you can consume in a week, let alone a weekend!
• Sore feet from running entries up to the judge’s tent.
• Dishpan hands from helping wash up.
• A great night’s sleep… the night AFTER the competition.

What will we ask you to do?  That’s simple:

• Help us set up our site.
• Assist in getting stuff on and off the smoker.
• Help with clean up and break down of the site.
• Try not to eat so much barbecue that you stomach explodes.
• Have a GREAT time!

Let me know if you’re interested in seeing a competition from the cook’s side of the booth… If you think you’d like to compete someday, this a way to know for sure!  I’ll guarantee that you’ll be hooked!!!

Finally, the results from the Taste of Grand Rapids competition!  This was our best showing yet.  I was told recently that we shouldn’t expect anything until at least 6 competitions, so I feel we’re really doing well.

The top 15 overall results were:
Grand Champion: CancerSucksChicago.com
Reserve Grand Champion: Bar-B-Quau
3. Hoosier Hogs
4. Big Moe’s BBQ
5. Bad Attitude BBQ
6. Tom & Josh’s Orgasmic Slabs
7. Down Home BBQ
8. Jerry King Midland TX
9. Motly Que Crew
10. Big Creek BBQ
11. Pork of the North
12. Doctor Porkenstein
13. All Day Smoke
14. Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue
15. Donnie’s Bar-B-Que Smoke

Of course, I had to go to 15 to get us in the list!

Read the rest of this entry »

Our fourth competition is now over!  It was the Taste of Grand Rapids, in Michigan, on July 14 and 15, 2006.  In this entry, I’m going to have lots of photos, and some deconstruction of my impressions of how we did and how the competition was run.

Let’s start with the competition organization.  This was in some ways a horrible competition.  Some proof of this is the reaction of other competitors on the BBQ Forum and the BBQ-Brethren Forum.  Basically, I felt that the organizers treated the cooks as an afterthought, without a lot of thought into what the teams needed.

For instance, there was electricity brought in for the vendors, but not the competitors.  There were only a very few facilities for the teams, yet plenty if you wanted to go find them a quarter mile away.  The ice was as far from the cooks as it could be, and the organizers didn’t deliver it to the cooks until well into the afternoon on Friday, though many teams were there by 9:00 am.  The reps didn’t walk around to introduce themselves, nor did they come by Saturday morning for time checks with the teams.

Ok, that’s the negative… Now the positive…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a hectic week for the last few days, and I’m trying to catch up. so I thought I’d get a quick post up for kind of an admin sort of clean up.

First of all, I sincerely apologize to everyone waiting for sauce; last week just hit me really hard, getting ready for a comp right after vacation (last time I’ll ever do that, I hope!), and some problems that turned out not to be too much to worry about with my dog.  I really missed having my wife at the competition in Grand Rapids, but I love her all the more for staying home to spend time with my almost-15 year old black lab.  Anyway, no excuses, but deep apologies, and I’ll be finishing up stuff tonight, and the sauce will be sent out in the next couple of days.

I’ll write more about this later, but our Grand Rapids results were our best yet.  The short version is:

Chicken - 40
Ribs - 20
Pork - 15
Brisket - 5!!!!

We came in 14th out of 57 teams!  And we can now honestly say that we have ‘award winning’ barbecue!  We couldn’t stop smiling after our first walk up!  it’s like being a tourist… You don’t want to look like a tourist, but you want to see everything.  When we got called up, we didn’t want to look like it was our first time up, but we couldn’t stop smiling!!!

Ed Tobian joined us for the weekend, from the eastern side of Michigan, and provided incredible help all weekend.  Along with that, we really worked ou the new smoker, along with Martin, the designer and builder of the Smokehouse (who also helped out immensely).  We found a few things to tweak about the smoker, but we got some great food off of the beast!

Pictures and more detail will be coming shortly!

It’s going to be a hot one in Grand Rapids this weekend!  But we’re on our way this afternoon to the Taste of Grand Rapids.  I hear rumors of 71 teams competing, which surprises me since the prize money is pretty low, there’s no running water or electricity.

The weather is going to be in the low 90s with a healthy (or unhealthy, I guess) amount of humidity thrown in.  We have some neck thingies that are supposed to help out by cooling down the blood in our necks or some such thing; we’ll see if they work or not!

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been REALLY hectic lately.  My wife and I were on vacation all last week, and now we have a competition coming up THIS WEEKEND!  We’re going to the Taste of Grand Rapids, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  We’ll be proudly displaying our Ohio State camp chairs, of course.

What’s different about this competition?  Well, a lot.  First of all, they provide no electricity, and no running water.  That’s going to be odd; those 2 things have been available at my other comps.  There’s going to be water, but not running water.

Read the rest of this entry »