Random Grillin'

Here are a final two photos from the Smokin' on the Track contest.  I took these mainly for posterity - one of the guys at work has the same Weber style set up the guy next to us was using, and then the other is one of the other neighbor's beer can chicken. Or maybe they were turkeys - because that group's members certainly were.

It's a long story, but one of them had been drinking all day, and he thought he was quite the funny man.  A bit of a smart ass if you ask me - then later his antics got them disqualified.

They'd driven down from Pittsburgh, and they had an elaborate set-up.  So I bet they had the ride home they all deserved!

What's cookin' - at Smokin' on the Track

So the grill was lit, some preliminary socializing was out of the way, and we'd even had our health inspection.  The long and slow cooking parts were underway.  It was time to begin planning how our items were going to come off the grill and get lined up for submission.

The schedule for submitting the chicken. ribs, pulled pork, and brisket was pretty tight, all set at 30 minute intervals in the afternoon.  I set my watch, which has five alarm settings, to go off with thirty minute notice for each of these, which are shown in the first photo. Then we got to cooking - brisket and pork were the first in, as shown in the previous post.

These next three images are of the pulled pork - first when we checked on it midway through cooking, second when we pulled it out of the smoker and began breaking it down, and last, just before submission, as we presented it..

I have to admit, this was my favorite part of the contest.  We felt like we'd done a good job on this, and with second opinions from a few friends and family, we were getting good feedback.  We were proud to put this one up in front of the judges.

But we only finished 10th or so on this.  We learned later that the instructions for this meat specified that the sauce would be mixed in with the pork - we had a prized recipe that we had cooked up on the side, but we couldn't figure out how to submit it, and we had overlooked the instruction.  So we'll have to see how we do next year on this.

Next up are the brisket and ribs we submitted.  The brisket came out just right, as far as being done and cooked tender.  But it had begun to dry out a little, since we finish it early and took it off the heat, and then took it back up to temp before allowing it to rest so we could slice it.  We ended up fixing this with just a little brush of sauce - and these placed fifth overall out of 20.

The ribs had their own special considerations - Jared carefully sliced them off from bone to bone - with a bone in the center.  So the lucky judge would actually getting two ribs' worth of meat with these.  They were done with a dry rub - again no sauce, and we placed about the same as we had on the pulled pork.

Finally, here's our chicken.  We had prepared two batches, one with a traditional rub, which is what we submitted, and one with a Greek style lemon and oregano marinade.  That one came out great too - but we decided we should go with the traditional recipe for the contest.  That turned out to be a good decision - we placed third in chicken.

Finally, Dwayne, Jared and I waited to hear how we had done in the overall category.  With a third in chicken, and a fifth in brisket, we'd already done better than we expected in our first competition, but the two lower finishes in pork might set us back a little bit.  They only announced the podium finishers, but they passed around the final results (and later they posted those on the web):  

Two Fat Farmers and a City Slicker placed fourth overall!

We all had a great time and we're looking forward to next year - or the next contest.  We'll keep you posted!

Oh-dark-thirty at Smokin' on the Tracks

Things start early in the Valley and the Smokin' on the Tracks fest was no exception.  In fact, we'd agreed that we would meet at the Shenandoah Speedway that morning at 6:00 am, or as close to that as we could.

I drove over Friday night, arriving at Hawksbill Cabin at about 11 pm.  So you see my dilemma with these events.  But I always remember some advice from my dad when I'm dragging my butt out of bed for a purpose:

"Son, if you are going to hoot with the owls, you better be ready to soar with the eagles."

It was so dark when we arrived, I couldn't find Jared and Wayne, my other team members, shown here with one of the neighbors in the first photo, as Jared gets the grill started.  Fortunately, Jared saw me driving around looking for them, and called my cell, vectoring me back to our spot.

I should make a note about our team - it was a few weeks ago that Jared told me about the fest and his plan to form a team.  I invited myself along because of a shared interest in pork and grilling on big units.  Jared graciously allowed me to be part of it all - and it is with great pride that I report our team name - Two Fat Farmers and a City Slicker.

As the light started to come up, I noticed that two spots over, the contestants had actually decided to sleep near their grill under a tarp on air mattresses.  They were snoozing away over there while we were loading charcoal in our grill - I should note these well-rested fellows won second place overall in the contest.

With the fire started, we moved over to get the first meats ready to go in as soon as the heat was up.  That meant brisket and Boston butt - shown here, as are the ribs, which we didn't put in until around 11 am.  Jared had brought along a secret recipe rub which he is putting on here.

About 45 minutes after the grill was loaded with coal, the early meats had been rubbed and were ready to go in.  That's the last photo for today, with them all set up in their pans to cook away a couple of hours over slow heat.

The Grillin' Units at Smokin' on the Track

So, I am going to write about our team and about the food we cooked during the Smokin' on the Track fest, but this morning as I began to write that post I had a few computer problems, and didn't manage to finish that post.  Instead, let me post today some more of the photos I took while I had a few minutes - of some of the rigs the various cooking teams had out there for the contest.

First is the one we used, this vertically oriented grill with the UVA image on it.  Like many of them were, it's made out of an old metal fuel or water tank; in fact, there was a lot of lore and discussion about work in progress that a lot of the teams had going on, making new grills.

In the background from ours, you can see a red unit in the distance.  That actually is one you see around town in Luray at Luray Fire Department events.  That fellow owns the one we borrowed.  The fire department themed grill is pretty cool - here's a photo.

Next I am going to show the set up that one of the pro teams had going on - they had quite a few of those "eggs" working.  You can clearly see two of them here - they had a couple of the next size down, and even an egg chimnea displayed around their space.  I don't know how they placed, clearly they were sponsored by the manufacturer though.

I've posted about this one before.  If you're out in Luray you'll see this one parked in front of the old cannery in the Stonyman neck of the woods.  These guys catered a gig at Wisteria recently, and they fabricate grills there.  I really like this one, right down to the chicken and pig cut outs that are welded on it for decoration.










For the last one, I want to show this one painted up in Army camouflage.  As a matter of fact, the guy running this won first place overall - he'd come up from somewhere in North Carolina to participate.  I talked to him about the rig.

He told me he painted it up to honor his son, who is enlisted in the Army and stationed at Fort Benning.  I thought that was a pretty nice story and privately was rooting for him after that - hoping he would finish second behind us.

I've given away part of the story now by telling how he finished.  More to follow.

The Big Do - Smokin' on the Track BBQ Fest

Saturday was a pretty busy day around Page County - there was just a lot going on.  I spent my day at the Smokin' on the Track BBQ Fest put on by Performing Arts Luray (PAL) down at the Shenandoah Speedway.

Mary joined me later in the day - here she is posing with the fest mascot Dale Swinehart.

I was there as part of a BBQ team led by Jared Burner from Skyline Premium Meats, one of the Page County Grown farmers - I've got a link below to a couple of past visits to the farm.  Jared and another friend and I formed a BBQ team to compete in the Backyard Boyz part of the deal.  More on that later though,

There was a lot of activity to go around at this event.  Here are a couple of photos - one of Wisteria, our neighbor who also ended up across the aisle from where our team was set up cooking, and one of the Cornhole Tournament area as it was being set up.

I took this one sometime in the morning before the gates had actually opened.  I flagged down one of the volunteers on a golf cart to see if I could pick up a few bags of ice for the Wisteria booth.  That's the only way I managed to check out those areas, since the cooking kept us so busy down in the infield.

Here's another couple of shots - very early in the morning.  I went over to grab a cup of coffee and walked back through the grandstands at the track.  Hey, the area where the guy waves the start and finish flags for the race track was right there, so I climbed up there and took these photos of the infield.  Still a lot of vendors yet to show at this time, but all the cook-off competitors were up and running.

 I've got a couple of posts I will put up about the event this week.  I took some photos of the grills I saw when I took and early walk, and then of course I want to post on our cooking and the results.  So more to come.

Here is a link about the Smokin' on the Track fest:
http://smokinbbqpal.com/

Here are a couple of posts about Jared's farm:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2012/08/getting-back-on-topic-of-page-county.html
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/09/page-county-grown-farm-tour-skyline.html