Practice Butt this past Saturday

Well I thought I'd try a new pork recipe this past Saturday since this is one of the categories we are struggling with at competition. I got a recipe from Alton Brown. It included a brine mixture of molasses, salt, and water. It sat in that for about 12 hours and then I used my usually rub and smoked for about 2 hours a pound at about 225 degrees. Well it didn't get done as much as it need to but the flavor made it all the way through making it the best tasting pork I've done. Now I just need to figure out the tenderness issues. Next time I am going to try to wrap it much earlier in the process in hopes that it will aid in breaking down some of those connective fibers.

The Taste of Grand Rapids

Well we have successfully completed our second contest. We managed to improve in every category except for brisket which we dropped 10 points. Even with our improved scores we still failed to finish in the top 10. We actually finished 36th out of 43 teams. But considering the level of competition there, we were happy with the improvements in score. We did receive one stage call though and that was for the dessert category. Amazingly we took 2nd place and just missed 1st by .0002 points!

All in all a very good weekend, in which we still learned a lot about our own food and how we are going to proceed in the next one.