A couple of weeks ago we did our fourth competition of the year: The Friendly Fires Peterborough Rib Cookoff. This was an unsanctioned competition, with the prize being a Saffire Kamodo grill.
This competition was different from all of the ones we’ve done so far, and we were cooking St Louis cut side ribs instead of back ribs. We were also cooking 4-8 racks, so we would have samples to pass out to the public as they were visiting. We ended up doing 5 racks, which was as much as I wanted to cram in on a rack, as I also had some stuff to throw on the bottom rack for nibbling later.
This was the furthest east we had gone to do a competition, and I had been talking on Twitter to a couple of teams from the Ottawa/Montreal area: Rope A Dope, and Sibling Rivalry. Both of them are doing very well in the CSBBQ, in 2nd and 4th place overall. We planned to make some extra food while there to share, and between the three of us we had armadillo eggs, ABTs, a fatty/bacon explosion, moinks, and bacon wrapped sausages. Friendly fires, the host of the event, also had hot dogs, pizza, and ribs. We ate well that day, between everything that was made, and all of the competitors rib samples at the end of the day!
The competition itself was fun. It was a windy day, and I had problems with wind gusting into the exhaust of my drum, so I was having problems with temperature spikes. I adjusted my cooking times, and built a wind break out of some aluminium foil and duct tape. That helped keep the temp down a lot, but I still had to adjust my cooking times to get my ribs to the right tenderness.
When it was finally turn in time, I wasn’t sure how the tenderness of the ribs were going to be because of the temperature spikes. Luckily, when I took them off, they were great! I got them cut up, and we made our box. I also managed to drop a whole rack on the ground… good thing we had 5 racks this time!
The rack I dropped
The next hour or so was spent waiting for judging. We wandered around the area, talking to the other teams and sampling ribs. Everyone that tried our ribs and moinks loved them, and it was nice to get some feedback from the public on the flavour.
We ended up right in the middle this time, at 5th out of 10 teams. Not the greatest result, but we were happy for Marc from Sibling Rivalry who won first place. Check our their blog about the competition here! I was happy with the way our ribs turned out, but I guess on that day they weren’t what the judges were looking for. I would have liked to win a komodo cooker, but there’s always next year!
On another note, a couple of readers from the Facebook page stopped by during the day for a chat. It was really awesome to meet some of my readers in person and talk BBQ, and kind of cool for us to be recognized. It was also awesome to finally get to meet some of the teams from out east.
Our next competition is in 3 weeks at the BBQLympiques in Brossard, Quebec. It’s a CSBBQA AVC event, which means we’ll get our third score in for the amateur circuit. My wife and I are taking advantage of the long weekend and making it into a little getaway. Can’t wait!
Great meeting you and your better half at the comp. Looking forward to Montreal, we’ll be in on Saturday and leaving likely early Monday. Will you be coming by the event on Saturday for any of the “Pro” goings on, or enjoying what Montreal has to offer and then doing the bright and early on Sunday?
Also, big fan of your turn in box presentation, I actually had to ask before turn in if it was a strict limit of 6 or a minimum of six, glad I did or we would have been discoed for too many ribs in the box.
We’ll be in early Saturday but we’re going to try to make a trip out of it and spend the day wandering around Montreal. No kidding about the bright and early eh, I think 7am is the earliest cooks meeting I’ve seen so far… but it makes sense if they want to keep turn ins lined up with the pros.
Did they actually say there was a strict limit of 6? I didn’t catch that at all and was going to put more in actually, but I decided to save them for the samplings.
Was great to meet you guys as well! Was there a limit for the boxes? I put 10 ribs in my box, thought they were awesome, but got crap scores, oh well!