Sweet Racks Competition BBQ Team

This blog is setup to chronicle the trials and tribulations of a rookie competitive BBQ team competing on the KCBS circuit.

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Josh and I am the Pit Master for Sweet Racks BBQ. Almost 4 years ago I was talked into competing in a small county fair backyard chef competition. It sounded like fun so I did it and didn't place in any category. But I caught the bug. I spent the following 12 months preparing for the event and in 2007 I took first for beef and my dad took first for ribs. We also earned the Grand Champion title. Instead of satisfying the hunger I had it only increased it! I competed again in 2008 and again won beef, took 3rd in ribs, and was crowned Grand Champion for the second straight year.

It was after the this second win that I decided it may be time to retire the backyard chef title and graduate to Professional BBQ-er. For the last 10 months, I have been pouring over websites and books in an attempt to learn everything I could about the art of BBQ. I quickly learned that I have never really done BBQ. I had been grilling this whole time. The thought of producing something juicy and tender that had been sitting on the grill for 6 or more hours didn't make sense to me.

I slowly learned. Practicing cooking low and slow on my propane grill where I knew I could easily control the temperature. This gave me the opportunity to experiment with different flavors of wood chips, sauces, rubs, and just about anything else you can do to meat without having to worry about the meat turning out. I had myself convinced that if I could figure out the flavors that I would no doubt figure out the smoking part without a problem even though I hadn't ever really cooked on charcoal.

I got my first charcoal smoker only two weeks ago. I am sorry to say that I seriously overestimated my abilities to control the temp on one of these units. I have done two practice cooks the last two weekends and have yet to turn out even mediocre meat. We are now roughly two weeks away from our first event and I am feeling very little confidence. Lots more work to do. The team is doing a "dress rehearsal" this weekend and I am hopeful to be borrowing a different smoker to try out.