G'night, Missiz Houza
It was so hot in Excelsior Springs…
How hot was it!?
Shut up. It wasn’t as hot as Warrensburg was the year Beer, Meat and Rebar screwed up one of the best brisket recipes in the world. But they had an excuse: they were idiot frat boys. I have no excuse for the bad ribs at Excelsior. I shoulda joined a frat.
Chicken did well. Which is weird, because I don't think the box looked that great. But the judges seeemed to like it, so what the hell do I know?
So, what happened to the ribs? Well, first the scores: Chicken 8th, Brisket 14th, Pork 20-something, Ribs 56th or something awful like that. Out of 62 teams. Now, what happened to the ribs? Well, the racks cooked on our old “stick-burner,” AKA the Gremlin Grill, were over-cooked. Not burned, over-cooked. The racks cooked on the Smith & Wesson were under-cooked. The racks I forgot to cook were very under-cooked.
And they were all salty as hell.
So let’s look at what might have caused all this.
Over-cooked: I put them on the smoker at about 4:30 am. I dozed a bit, but my watch alarm went off every 20 minutes, so I know the fire never spiked higher than 240. Yes, I have a watch alarm. Doogie Howser had a pants alarm, I have a watch alarm.
I digress. How did those racks get over-cooked? There may have been an hour or two when we put the chicken on the smoker and the temp was closer to 250. And the ribs may have cooked more than we anticipated after we removed them from the smoker and dropped them in a cooler/Cambro holder.
Or someone cheated. I suspect Doogie was on another team and he knew if we did well in ribs, Wanda would dump him for us. That’s my theory.
Wanda liked her pork sweet and her Funyuns slightly stale.
Under-cooked: I’m pretty sure that I just took them off of the Smith and Wesson too early. I should have opened the foil and actually checked the ribs, rather than feel through the foil.
Or someone cheated. Doogie may have been behind this one, too, because let’s face it: Wanda was hot. Doogie took our perfect ribs and replaced them with his under-cooked ribs. The bastard.
Un-cooked: We had a dozen freakin’ racks of ribs and I didn’t see three of them and they didn’t get cooked so shut up.
Salty as hell: I followed the rub recipe from this past spring. I’m assuming Brett did, too, because every rack was too salty, not just the ones with his or mine. So maybe we put too much rub on them? That’s a safe bet.
Or maybe someone cheated. That little bastard who was Doogie’s friend – what was his name? Was it Vinnie? It was Vinnie. Without Doogie, Vinnie had nothing. Janine would have dumped his ass, that’s for sure. He’d have been another scrawny, mouthy little Italian kid getting his ass kicked daily because he just didn’t know when to shut up. So I'm betting Vinnie helped Doogie by sweating all over our ribs.
Doogie liked his pork...OK, just keep the Italian sausage jokes to yourself.
So what’s all that mean? In a twisted, paranoid conspiracy, Doogie Houser sabotaged our ribs in a desperate effort to save his relationship with Wanda. And imagine: had I not written “watch alarm” and been reminded of Doogie’s “pants alarm,” we’d have been stuck thinking we screwed up the ribs ourselves. Thank God for television.