The Pickled Pig's 2009 Lawrence Contest Pics

[The Big Pig]

We competed in the Lawrence Sertoma 48 BBQ contest this weekend. For a lot of reasons, this is always one of our favorite contests and it lived up to our expectations again this year.

We had about a dozen or so friends come and hang out with us on Friday night for an evening of good food and good fun. And we had the opportunity to socialize with someof our favorite fellow competitors throughout the weekend. The moderate weather was just the icing on the cake.

Of course, one we reason we like the Lawrence contest is that we always seem to do well there. The Pickled Pig won our very first 1st place award in Lawrence in 2003. In 2006, we had our first Top 10 Overall finish in Lawrence. This year, we finished 5th overall out of 48 teams. While we would have liked to have done better, we are ecstatic about getting 1st place in ribs. It was also nice to see our chicken hit again with a 7th place finish.

We've been struggling with ribs for the last 2 years. We really like our flavor profile and at times, have turned in some very tender and moist ribs but haven't been very successful gaining the favor of the judges. The only change we made was to follow the advice from barnburner received here last week regarding cutting back on the sauce. I think it was good advice and goes to show that sometimes a small change can really impact scores across the board. These ribs scored a 176.5714 with 4 of the judges awarding 999.

Below our pictures of our entries. I apologize in advance for the low quality and focus issues. Our new canopy is very effective at blocking sunlight and my cheap camera didn't do well. Our appearance scores in every category were exceptional this week. Out of the 24 appearance scores for the four categories, we received 11 - 9's and 13 - 8's. That might be a record for us.

[barnburner]

Paul.. Your welcome. I'll take repayment in the form of getting some of those ribs. Much better looking this week.

[smokin mike]

congrats on the walks you guys!

[Jimster]

Great Job! Nice Boxes!

[swamprb]

How are you cooking your ribs in the drums? Any foil involved? I've not been thrilled with my ribs cooked on them-care to share?

[jon]

Actually, I cook them on Hannah, my CS 680 pellet smoker..... and yes, there is foil involved.

[Finney]

Good job... food looks great.

[killerhogs]

Great job. Btw I tried the chicken technique this past weekend "practice run" and everyone thought that it was the best chicken they'd ever ate.

[patw01]

Grats on the Ribs guys! As usual, it all looks awesome!

[The Big Pig]

How are you cooking your ribs in the drums? Any foil involved? I've not been thrilled with my ribs cooked on them-care to share?

Actually, I cook them on Hannah, my CS 680 pellet smoker..... and yes, there is foil involved.

For contests we've been cooking on Jon's pellet cooker because our current process and timing for ribs needs a degree of precision and temperature control we don't have on other cookers. But we have been practicing ribs (both BBs and spares) on the drums with excellent results. If only the turn-in times at a contest were a little flexible...

And regardless of the cooker being used we foil the ribs when they have the desired color. We just have to be careful not to carmelize any of the sugar additives put into the foil and watch them carefully.

On the drums, ribs seem to take about 2 hours start to finish. On the pellet cooker we use a 4 hour cycle.