Monday, September 5, 2011

Calibrating Competition BBQ

So a more thoughtful post today. Your a competition BBQ cook and your having trouble in a category. What do you do? Was it just the judges fault? Did you do something wrong? Or does your food just really suck? No one is going to answer those questions for you, your just going to see your name toward the bottom of the results sheet.

Well, the judges are judges and you can't change what they think or do. So, forget about them.

Did you do something wrong? Well, that for you and your team to analyze. If you did, fix it next time. If you didn't, sounds like its time for a change.

Sounds simple, just change something. Its not, because every change can be positive or negative. And if you change more than one thing, there is no way to know how each individual change impacted the overall dish. Which is why I usually only change one thing at a time. Maybe tweek a sauce, or a rub, or a marinade, or a brine. Then see how each individual change impacts the whole. That usually will get the job done, but requires patience since it may be the 1st change or the 30th that finally gets things dialed in.

Or, if you don't have patience or something is beyond tweeking slowly, just ditch it and change everything. Thats exactly what I did this past weekend. I used a completely different flavor combination, but one that I used in my very first KCBS competition ever. This got us a 6th place call in chicken and you would have thought we won the lottery.

Lets see what next week brings....

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