smoking Competition Cooks and Judges- It is time!!!

It's time to start signing up for your favorite competitions!

Ok, so maybe all of them aren't taking applications yet, but some are! I've already got 4 contests signed up to judge and two to cook. We'll probably only cook 3 or 4 contests this year, but I plan on judging many more.

We're lucky enough to be an hour and a half from the American Royal, so we'll cook the open and judge the invitational. That is, of course, unless we win a championship, then we'll cook both

Anyone in on the Sam's Club Tour besides me? We're judging the Lenexa, KS contest and cooking the Des Moines, IA contest.

Good luck on the comps. I thought about competing a while back, but to be honest I don't want to start competing if I can't dedicate the amount of time and effort it takes to really do well so I have only been judging. Signed up for 8 contest so far and I will be judging the Sams club event in SD this year.

Since they isn't a lot of BBQ comps in Cali (in comparison to MO) a few teams and judges started up a group called "So Cal Meatup" to help get new teams trained and ready for competing. The team that won the first 2 backyard events started his ROY this year and his first event he got 1rst in chicken and 2nd in ribs. Although his other 2 meats didn't do as well it seems like the mentoring is working!

LGHT said:

Good luck on the comps. I thought about competing a while back, but to be honest I don't want to start competing if I can't dedicate the amount of time and effort it takes to really do well so I have only been judging. Signed up for 8 contest so far and I will be judging the Sams club event in SD this year.

Since they isn't a lot of BBQ comps in Cali (in comparison to MO) a few teams and judges started up a group called "So Cal Meatup" to help get new teams trained and ready for competing. The team that won the first 2 backyard events started his ROY this year and his first event he got 1rst in chicken and 2nd in ribs. Although his other 2 meats didn't do as well it seems like the mentoring is working!

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It certainly can take a certain amount of dedication- especially on the $$ side!! The winter before we started cooking comps we'd do one of the 4 meats every weekend, just to find the recipe we liked. Then once we had the recipes we liked we did 3 full cooks on our own just to get out timings down and work on meat consistency! It was work and money for sure, but we had a blast standing at at my parents butcher-block counter top eating and judging piles and piles of meat!

I think we had a big head start from judging as much as had before we started cooking. We knew what we liked as judges, plus we talk to a lot of people at contests to see what they like as well. The more homework you can do, the better!!

Something else about cooking on a team though- no body said you have to be in it to win it! It's a great opportunity to eat a lot and drink all weekend!!!

I think you're in for a treat on the Sam's Club competition- I got to judge one last year and I had probably the highest average score for any contest I'd judged. I got 6 killer samples of everything. (Usually I get at least one bad brisket or something...)

Yeah, maybe when I retire I'll take up competing. I know for sure judges make the best cooks and up until recently a lot of teams never judges, but are starting to realize the advantage of being a judge and seeing what wins and what doesn't. One of the big advantage of our hosted back yard events is we use nothing, but CBJ's and the judging is a Live format so each time has the opportunity to here immediate feedback straight from the CBJ although the judges have no idea who's meat they are judging.

I judged a Sam's event last year and I will say it was a lot higher bar mainly because you didn't have a lot of local teams competing. I got a chance to judge the first KCBS event this year and it was the same results. Lots of teams came in from out of state to get some well needed TOY points.

I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow to get me a statin for my BBQ hobby.


That's either really bad or really awesome...