Transformer BBQ

hey - here’s a shout out and warm welcome to our newest teammate Mike looking good in his transformer bbq shirt!

(just kidding)

The squad returned to New Hampshire for the Rock and Ribs Festival looking for a little revenge after having a disappointing performance at the event last year. Terrence, back from school for the summer, joined the team for the first time since Harpoon last year. After arriving Saturday morning and setting up the site, the team shifted modes for the grilling competition. Despite seeming more interested in the beautiful weather and looking for the infamous ninja’s from last year, the team pulled a respectable 5^th place overall during the first day. The highlight of the competition was Julie’s fruit category which she pulled down a second place for her mango. A close second was the impressive scores the team received for appearance. Rumor has it there was something special in those boxes. Sadly, the ninja’s managed to elude the Transformer squad. However, JT and Terrence managed to find the french fries, fried dough, and bloomin onions. They were able to resist the sweet temptation of the deep fried oreos, luckily. While Brendan and Julie prepared the meat for the BBQ competition, Terrence and JT turned their attention to libations and preparing the next day’s turn in boxes. Patrick arrived later in the evening, just in time to refresh the supplies and bring the ping pong balls. Team bonding ensued for the rest of the night.

The BBQ competition highlighted the strides that the team has taken last year. While Transformer wasn’t able to take the Grand Champions position, we placed second in chicken and third in pulled pork. Overall, Transformer ended up 4^th in the BBQ competition. The weekend ended abruptly when a monsoon rolled in and left every one scrambling for shelter. Some team members were lucky enough to find a seat in a car, some were lucky to have rain gear. And then there was Terrence who was thankful to have the shelter of the collapsible trash barrel to protect him from the storm. Alls well that ends well.

-T

kcbs certified bbq judge reporting for duty…the event at peter’s pond was great.  although i was a bit nervous about eating all that food, i found it much easier than expected.  for the most part, the food was good with a few standouts and a few not so good items.  what i enjoyed most was getting to see what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ after we turn in our food.  i’m happy to report that the process is quite smooth and it seems to really work well.  of course, everyone has their own taste preferences, however, for the most part i found that most of the table formed a concensus around what they liked and did not liked (nothing was discussed until of course after all scores were tallied).  i’m glad i had the chance to participate and i’m sure i’ll judge again at some point.  it was certainly much easier to stroll in that morning with no gear to set up, no stress, nothing to cook overnight, clean, etc.  a nice little break.  we stayed for the afternoon and into the evening to hang out with friends.  congrats to i smell smoke for taking the prize and to lakeside smokers on reserve.   On to new hampshire this weekend, wish us luck….julie

Was it Bobby Flay covering the Royal that makes us want to go so badly?  Not really. As much as we love Bobby, it doesn’t take much to convince me that going to the Royal is something that I want to do and make happen this year!  I just added it to our ‘official’ (changes every other day) contest roster - so now I just need to do some organizing.  So why not go?  I have two tickets on American just waiting to be used.  And if I’m going to pay $15 for my bag - I’m jam packing it full of spices, sauce and utensils (can I bring knives?).  I think the only tough part might be finding a smoker, but I have a feeling we can make this work too.  Experiencing a 450+ team contest must be amazing - I’d like to go even if I wasn’t going to cook…but then again, if we are there, why not cook?  American Royal - here we come!

As excited as I am about bbq right now, I’m actually also feeling very nervous about judging my first event tomorrow at Peter’s Pond.  I’m not so much worried that the food will be way better than what we can make, because of course there will be a lot of that…I’m actually freaked out that I have to judge 5 categories, 6 samples each for a grand total of 30 different items.  That is completely overwhelming and I wish I didn’t eat anything today - I’m going to need to be hungry.  I’m sure it will be great, can’t wait to try some tasty food.  And, of course I’m looking forward to hanging out with good friends…

As soon as we start to get ancy, we sign up for extra contests…which is what happened with Grilling on The Bay.  We were already headed to Connecticut on Sunday for a baby shower (Sheila from Q Haven), we were sort of thinking Brooklyn was right around the corner and why not go?  So we took it easy and made it as relaxing as we could.  We also have a lot of wedding stuff going on lately so this was a nice escape from all of that!  The contest was in a great location, however, the turnout was not very high.  Only six teams made the trip - apparently a number of teams did not show up at all.  We thought we cooked some pretty good food and took 1st in two categories. Our big flaw of the weekend was not cooking ribs for the ‘pork’ category.  We did chops which were good, but could never stack up to delicious ribs.  Lesson learned. Anyway, it was a great time, Brendan I worked together better than ever and we had fun too.  Congrats to Clint/Smoke in Da Eye who rocked the event as grand champion.  Enough with the grilling for us, we are excited to get in some BBQ’ing!

I think its harder to write stuff when you do well.  Its always easy to pick out things that went wrong, a step that was missed, something being over cooked.  Well, Oyster Bay is a little hard to write about since we didn’t have any issues.  

The weekend started out well, boss let me go early, and the truck was already packed.  Made the drive down to long island with no issues, and better yet, no traffic.  Arrived at the hotel about 10:30, got our room and went down to the hotel bar to meet up with Ted and Sheila from Q Haven.  Spent a few hours telling stories, and had a few drinks… and got some great sleep.
 

We were one of the last teams to pull in, around 7:45 (pretty standard move for us), and set up the stuff.   We talked a lot beforehand about “bringing minimal stuff” but for some reason we brought the normal contest rig, minus the lang.  We did bring our new smoker, the Caldera Tall Boy; which we  were a little worried about using it during the contest, but it actually worked perfectly.
 

After all was said and done, we finished with a 1^St in Beef, 1^st in pork chops, 4^th in Chicken, and a 2^nd in Oysters.  And walked with the Grand Champion Trophy for the event.  Was a bit of a shock, and we certainly were excited.  
 

We finished up the weekend by having dinner with Q Haven, great dinner right off 95 on the way home.  Hopefully we’ll see these guys around soon, as their first son is expected mid summer.
 

Hey there.  It has taken over a week, however, I have finally recovered from the party event of the year.  Last weekend, we attended the annual Beirut Tournament/Pig Roast at our friends Tim and Liz’s house.  This is honestly one of the best parties around.  The tourny is well run, teams are random and anything can happen!  I played with Tim and that was a good time, but we didn’t quite get it together and ended up being the first team to lose in the double elimination setup.  Brendan was lucky enough to be the only guy chosen to play on two teams due to the # of players.  His teammates were both really awesome players and of course Bren rocks.  When both teams made it to the final four, things got a little crazy.  Unfortunately (but logistically better) both teams did not make it to the final game.  The big game was on and Bren brought his A game.  His team won the tourny and all the glory that comes with it!  Along with being on top ‘athletic’ wise, Bren got lots of props for the fantastic BBQ.  In addition to the PIG, this year we also cooked up ten racks of ribs, two pork butts and a bunch of chicken.  No one went hungry this night.  And food was very necessary after all that beer.  I think 25 30 packs of coors light were put down that night.  It was a fantastic time and we can’t wait for next year!  -jc

ROAD TRIP… Hit the road this past Thursday night to compete in “Pork in the Park”, in Salisbury, MD.   We heard a lot of great things about it from the other NEBS teams who have gone in the past, and with a few months left till the next KCBS format contest around here, we decided to make the trip.  Truck was packed early in the week, and things went pretty smoothly getting on the road.  Couple planned stops and we were off, actually wasn’t too bad with 4 people in the crew cab and all the gear.  After a slight incident in the Bronx, which could have been a lot worse, we arrived in MD about 6am.  We did some basic unpacking, and got to sleep.  Little did we know we’d be sited into a space next to one of the huge generators… about 10am this thing was fired up and stayed at about aircraft engine level for the rest of the weekend.  (not sure why these needed to be in the middle of teams, there was plenty of room for this to be wired in where it wasn’t so close to teams.  Especially something the size of a Mack truck). 
   We got the rest of the site set up, got inspected, and sort of hung around for a while. As the teams rolled in, we checked in with our NEBS friends, and slowly started prepping meat for both contests.   The normal core crew was with us, Julie, JT and myself, and this time we were helped out by a friend of ours Rob, whok has come to the last two contests, and I think may be starting to get hooked.  We also took delivery of our new smoker… which were decided to try out during the Friday night categories of Perdue Chicken, and Anything Butt.  Little more learning to do on the new cooker, but the service from the Guru guys was great.  They even printed out team name right on the unit… little stuff like that impresses me.
   The overnight went pretty much without any issues, and we were joined by some JT’s college friends, Greg, Drew and Lucy.  Its always nice to have visitors, especially with they come to make sure no one goes thirsty.
   After everything was said and done, out of 85 we finished 19^th overall, with a 5^th place call in Ribs and 10^th in Perdue chicken.  Had a few issues with chicken and pork, but we’ll get them ironed out.  
  Thanks for everyone who came out this weekend. And congratulations to Uncle Jed, he killed it this weekend in a real tough field.
 

-B

This past weekend we competed in the SnowShoe Grilling Challenge in Abington MA.   The event is a NEBS contest, and is strictly grilling.  The weather turned out to be cold, but the rain that had been forecasted was thankfully absent.  Extremely tough field, with no one being called in more than two categories… when the dust cleared we ended up 6^th of 18, with a 2^nd place finish in beef.  Overall there was a little disappointment, centered mostly around our fish entry… really thought it was go to item for us, and were very happy with the results.  Turns out some of the judges loved it 998 comes to mind, but two judges gave us 555’s.  I think I would have been happier with 6’s from both judges… at least I know the item is ‘average’.  Because of the way we cook the entry, it makes me wonder if certain judges are afraid of eating certain seafood, cooked certain ways.  Breaking down scores as always a single score higher by either of those judges in any category would have changed our overall…
 

Back to the drawing board.
 

Thanks to Lunchmeat, Gary, Michelle and everyone else who helped run the event.  Its low key, well run, no issues, and a great way to spend a Saturday.