Stagecoach 2010 - California State BBQ Chamionship

Meat, Inc. just finished attending Stagecoach 2010 - California State BBQ Championship in Indio, CA.

At this event the team consisted of Aaron, Noe, Joe, Dean, and joining for the first time, Colin, Strawberry, Josh, Doug, and Doug's Dad (Mike). We also had a bunch of our local friends hang out that were attending the music festival.

Dean in his ass-less chaps and the chair he held down all weekend!

This event was held at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival venue on the Indio, CA Polo Grounds. It was a three day event with live C & W music acts on Saturday and Sunday. The last figure I heard was 65,000 people per day attended!

You can always find Meat, Inc. flying the "Don't Tread On Me" Flag. You can't miss it!

Initially this was supposed to be a dual KCBS Sanctioned event but one of the contests was dropped and the Saturday contest was converted into a Kingsford Challenge event for Babyback Ribs and Spare Ribs. Sunday was a full KCBS event and State Championship.

Noe is sampling a Bloody Mary as he sets up camp.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and set up the trailer, BBQ's, and the site. All the BBQ teams were placed off the main area but within 100 yards of a secondary stage. We walked around on Friday night and realized how huge the place was. We got in a round of poker, had two or three beers, a few cool and delicious, and a cocktail or two.

Colin - the current President of Cool and Delicious prepping meat with Josh and Noe.

This was also a vending event so we got to sell our BBQ to the crowd. The really cool thing was we were not limited to the standard 4 KCBS meats during the vending. Meat, Inc. was prepared to vend our secret weapon - Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABT's). We brought 9 lbs of Jalapenos to make the ABT's and were hopeful we would sell out - along with the 150lbs of various pork, brisket, ribs, and chicken we also brought.

Colin getting some tips on how to prep pork butts from Aaron.

Saturday started up as usual with Noe's world famous 14 ingredient Bloody Mary's and the return of the smoked quiche. We smoked the ribs on the BBQ and at 11am turned in Babyback (sic) Ribs and at 1130 turned in Spare Ribs. We ended up taking 3rd place in Babyback and 15th in Spares closing us out for the day in 10th place overall in the Kingsford Challenge. The second part of the days events was the Best Booth Challenge. We decided to put on a History of BBQ display with 4 stations outlining the progression of BBQ and Smoking meats from the early 1500's to the modern day. The criteria included crowd interaction so we felt confident on our chances. We have no problem interacting with the crowd!

Smoked Quiche!

Vending day on Saturday was challenging. We use Traeger Pellet BBQs that require power. We lost power three times in the middle of the vending hours. This put a serious damper on our ability to cook our ABT's. Even with the power going out we sold out of ABT's by 3pm and all 150lbs of meat by 3:45 - right before the cut off of 4pm. We decided that since we blew through the ABT's AND we were out of meat, it was time for a trip into town. We purchased 20lbs of jalapenos - every single one they had at Smart & Final - along with another 100lbs of meats. We still had another 100lbs of meat left for our KCBS competition on Sunday. We scooted back and started prepping our meats for Sunday. At midnight we fired up the grills and started the brisket and pork butts.

Briskets are ON!

Sunday morning came way too early but we started the day off right with Bloody Mary's and another round of Carne Asada Chowder - and another standing ovation for this breakfast icon and now classic. We had all the teams within 30' "wandering" over to try some.

Assembly line of men - and Strawberry - making Atomic Buffalo Turds - Jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and hard salami, then wrapped in maple bacon and smoked for 1 1/2 hours. Absolutely fantastic - and fat free! These guys stuffed 20lbs of jalapenos in under 45 minutes. It took the crowd 1 1/2 hours to eat them.

We got all the meats turned in without too much drama and Day 2 of vending commenced. The power and the grills stayed up this time and we went through 20lbs of ABT's within 1 hour and 45 minutes. It also helped that the local paper featured a picture of our team and the headline screamed out Buffalo Turds. We also sold out all of the rest of the 200lbs of meat by 3pm. It was awesome!

Here's a link to the local newspaper featuring our Team and our revered ABT's:

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100425/EVENTS24/4250303/Barbecue-and-buffalo-turds-complement-country-festival

Dean and his trusty side kick Strawberry. Strawberry's name was changed to Tinkerbell after he posed for these pictures. We attempted to trade Tinkerbell for 3 beers and a 1/2 lb of bacon but had zero takers.

Kelly - the KCBS Rep making sure Meat, Inc. was following all the rules. Let's just say we passed but I don't think he looked very hard.

Award Time! Meat, Inc. did very well in the final results racking up a 15th in Brisket, 11th in Pork Butt, 8th in Ribs, and a very satisfying 2nd in Chicken! This was enough for a fat 8th Place overall in the comp. We also pulled in a 5th in the Best Booth Competition.

As of this posting, Meat, Inc. is currently ranked 1st in Chicken and 4th overall - IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA!!!! Official results are found here:

http://www.cbbqa.org/wiki/index.php?title=4th_Annual_Stagecoach_Music_Festival

15th Place Brisket!

11th place Pork!

8th Place Ribs!

2nd Place Chicken!

Golden State BBQ Championship

Meat, Inc. competed in the Golden State BBQ Championship this weekend. The event was in Hesperia, CA and it was WINDY. During the day it was sunny and warm but the wind did not stop - ever - at all - not once. At night it was downright cold. Thankfully Joe brought his trailer so we had a place to get out of the cold when we could.

Team members attending this event were Aaron, Ryan, Noe, and Joe.

Ryan setting up.

Sunrise after a very cold and windy night.

Aaron making breakfast for the crew. A new tasty dish was invented when Aaron didn't follow his mother-in-law's recipe. Carne Asada Chowder is now the official breakfast of Meat, Inc.

Carne Asada Chowder - a soupy, potatoy, cheesy, two kinds of potato and topped with carne asada - It was out of this world!

Aaron being a super geek and taking logs of the cooking process.

This was the first time we did this event and it was well run and pretty fun. It was an IBCA event - the first time we have done a non KCBS event - so we didn't have to make the fancy turn in boxes, we used Texas Lettuce (foil) so the turn ins went quickly and with about 30 seconds of prep. I liked not having to worry about the box prep. The competition was held at the Hesperia Civic Center / Park. There was also a Cancer Walk and a bunch of Historical Cars so there was a ton of people. We got to vend tastes to the public so we got to meet a bunch of really nice people! We also did a live demonstration of how we cut and prep our pork and brisket for about 10 people per meat. It was cool to pass on some information to the crowd and I think they really got a kick out of it. We might have to do this again. I doubt many teams want to do this because it is a stressful time and you are against the clock but at this competition we had an hour between turn ins instead of the normal 1/2 hour and we had to walk about 30 feet to the judges tent so it worked out great. The two other differences were we had to turn in a 1/2 chicken and we had to turn in spare ribs. All this turned out fine too.

A few of the many hot rods. The ghost red paint job on this car was incredible.

We did pretty good in this event with a 4th place finish in chicken and an 11th place finish in brisket. We finished 14th overall out of 32 teams. Overall a good comp and we all had a blast!

Here's the link to the official page:

http://www.cbbqa.org/wiki/index.php?title=2nd_Annual_Golden_State_BBQ_Championship

4th place 1/2 chicken - it was so tender and juicy we didn't even use any sauce.

Noe turning in the chicken.

Aaron pulling the ribs out of foil and getting ready to cut them up for turn in.

Rib turn in.

Joe helping out. Can you believe he's out of his chair?!?!?

Pulled pork turn in. No sauce was added and this probably hurt our score a bit because apparently the judges like sauce flavor to hide the incredible goodness of perfectly smoked pork butt!

Turn in Brisket was good for 11th place. A pretty solid finish for us. It was a bit overcooked but the judges must have liked Ryan's secret ingredient in our sauce!

Some of our new friends!

Grill Review - Char Griller Super Pro

Grill Review - Char Griller Super Pro with Offset Side Fire Box option added.

This is an unbiased review of this grill. The purpose is to educate and assist my fellow BBQ enthusiasts on different grills / BBQs I have used in my back yard or at competitions.

I do not own this grill. Meat, Inc. BBQ Team member Colin owns this particular grill.

First impressions: When I first saw the grill, I thought it was good sized. Looks like you can put a lot of meat in it. This is true if you are cooking for a back yard party or a small group of friends. The grill surface area is 580 square inches. This is about 50% more cooking area of a Weber WSM 18.5" or a Traeger Lil' Tex. The unit also looked structurally sound but upon further inspection, it was clear this grill was made for back yard use and not meant to be hauled around to competitions. The Offset Fire Box was an option that Colin added on to allow indirect heat or smoking.

Fuel Source: This grill uses charcoal briquettes or lump and wood can be added on top of the charcoal in the offset for smoking. One of the cool features about this grill is you can place charcoal in the main portion of the grill and get a really nice, hot direct cooking area for steaks or hamburgers. The offset adds the option of indirect heat and the possibility of throwing in a split of your favorite wood for smoking. The offset connects to the main grill where a prepared punch out section of the main grill body is removed when you bolt on the offset fire box. The downside of this added option is the hole between the offset fire box and the main grill is HUGE. There is no real way to tune this grill to even out the heat generated by the offset so the right side of the cooking area is way hotter than the left side. This kind of reduces the effective cooking area of the grill if you are smoking something. The upside is if you want to slow smoke something medium sized - like 3 tri-tips or a medium sized brisket AND you want to cook some chicken or jalapeno poppers using the higher heat on the right side at the same time - you can.

Temperature Range - Efficiency - Holding: The unit has adjustable vents on the offset firebox and a baffle on the smoke stack. I was able to hold a pretty stable temp of 250F throughout the cook without constant adjustment of the vents / airflow once I had the temp I wanted. When I wanted to crank the temp up to cook some other things - like peppers - it was tough to exceed 275F. I didn't really push the temp by adding a bunch of fuel but it seemed like there was some heat loss from the top of the offset. The material of the entire grill appeared to be 1/8" thick so this was probably the case. Since I'm comfortable smoking meats at 225 - 275, this isn't really an issue for me. This might even help some inexperienced cooks not ruin or burn some meats. When the temp dropped and additional fuel needed to be added - it was a snap - just open the offset door, throw in some more charcoal, and the temp was right back up to 250 in minutes. The rate that fuel needs to be replaced during long cooks will be determined by ambient temperature and type of fuel. The fuel seemed to burn slower than a kettle but probably because I kept the vents partially closed to control the heat.

The lid temp shows 195F, the right side at the grate (closest to the offset firebox) shows 280F, and the left side at the grate shows 215F. I was opening the doors quite a bit so the lid and the left side were off more than typical - I usually saw about a 50F drop / shift from right to left.



Overall Value: At the bottom of this post are the links for the main grill and the offset option. The total price comes out to about $220.00. Reasonable for a starter smoker AND a direct heat charcoal grill.

The tri-tip and the peppers came out awesome!

Links:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_44754-49769-2121_4294857761_4294937087?productId=3033621&pl=1&currentURL=/pl_Charcoal%2BGrills_4294857761_4294937087_?cm_cr=Grills%20$%20Outdoor%20Cooking%201.2-_-Web%20Activity-_-Grills%20and%20Outdoor%20Cooking%201.2%20A2%20Activity-_-SC_Grills%20%20Outdoor%20Cooking_Area2-_-17106_2

http://www.grillsdirect.com/barbecue-smokers/smoker-accessories/chargrillersidefirebox.cfm