Gremlin Grill

How’d it happen? I don’t know. I think I’ll blame equipment. A brand new thermometer told me the brisket wasn’t done, but when we went to slice it, it crumbled into a repulsive, dried-out, bitter heap of unpalatable crap. Like Madonna.

We also had my year-old electronic thermometer placed next to Kent’s fresh-out-of-the-package thermometer. Mine read a healthy and hearty 230+/- degrees, Kent’s read 200 degrees. Thirty degrees is no small difference. Warm your beer up 30 degrees, see how you like it. Do it.

Looked bad, tasted OK, finished 27th, I hate Madonna.

So one brisket was dried out, but the other was just about right. I don’t know why it didn’t dry out, but there ya go. So, it had to be good, right? Not if I picked out the wrong briskets, dammit. Our friends at HyVee let me pick our meat myself from every hunk they had in the cooler, and I grabbed two smaller ones. Because I’m an idiot.

The one we turned in was cooked about right, and the seasoning didn’t suck, either. I used a new marinade and rub recipe, and even wrote them down, in case we wanted to do it again. I can’t find the paper I wrote them down on, but still. Nice effort. But the briskets were both too small. We couldn’t get good presentation slices. Dammit.

Ditto the pork. The butts I picked out just weren’t good enough. Too small, and the muscles and fat were all weird. And it’s my fault because I picked them out. But I have to pass the blame onto someone, so I think hogs had something to do with it. They probably knew I’d be smoking them, so they slammed their shoulders against their pen walls over and over again, like when Mel Gibson popped his shoulder out in Lethal Weapon.

Martin Riggs has no problem with eating pork, even when it looks this bad.

Anyway, one butt was pullable, but they both needed more time on the smoker. And the flavor was good after I added the little somethin’ somethin’, but the presentation was just a freakin’ train wreck. Finished 41st.

Ribs were good, but I thought they could have used another hour on the smoker. Blame for that goes back to the incorrect crappy ass stupid thermometer. Flavor was great, and they boxed up real purty. And they scored the best – 18th out of 73 teams. One more hour on the smoker and they’d have probably been declared the greatest ribs in the history of everything.

Not sucky.

I don’t know what the hell happened with the chicken (56th). Sometimes the chicken just doesn’t click. Although Kent did seem pretty happy. And not at all surprised that he once again won the loser’s Old Style. Holy crap, are you tanking chicken to get the beer? Was that a chicken “Lookout block?”

Cold Style Gold Style Who Wants an Old Style!

Anyway, there ya go. We sucked at barbecue for a myriad of reasons. It could just be our “Tao of Que” attitude about contests. Maybe we shouldn’t just accept that we score where we score, be content with it. Maybe we need to try harder. Or not.

Congratulations on winning the beer again, stupid.

The bottom line: Brett deep fried mac and cheese. We dusted it with TheSlabs.com Stephy Style rub, and Brett got 3rd for it. And just like that, we became one of those teams. Great at sides, crappy at bbq.