AlabamaGrillBillies
is one Smokin' Farker
I just wanted to give a field report back to the Brethren. We recently competed in our third KCBS comp and tried a few different things that greatly increased our scores. Our cooking techniques and where we got our meat from remained the same, just a change in spices/rubs injections.
First off Chicken:
In this catagory we saw the second most improvement, and were pleased the most personally from the finished product. We were brining our chicken, using a homemade rub and then saucing with a sweet thick red sauce. For this comp we injected with FAB C, used Plowboys' Yardbird Rub and the same thick sweet red sauce. The FAB C basically did what brineing was doing with half the effort. The chicken was some of the most moist we have ever done. Our final thoughts on the FAB C was that it was worth the money to save us the time of brining at a comp. For home use we will probably stick with brineing. We swapped over to YardBird Rub and couldn't be happier. The flavor layers that rub has really showed up in the finished product we loved it and the judges did as well. We will be using a lot of this stuff in the future and I would reccomend trying it out. We finished 21st out of 72 teams. We were estatic with those results considering we had been placing in the 40s and 50s.
Brisket:
This is where we really made some leaps and jumps, to our suprise. We thought the brisket was OK, but not great. The judges gave us a 17th out of 72. That is the highest we've placed in any meat event and knocked our socks off. We beat Mike Davis and Lotta Bull, that was something on my personal 'to do list' and I never expected it to come this quick. We cooked two briskets both from our butcher, Angus, Choice dry aged. Both were rubbed with the same rub. One was injected with FAB B Lite and one was not. At the end of the cook the inject brisket was way, way juicer and also was darkened by the injection. The non injected brisket had a better look to it, and sliced easier. Whe collected the juices from the injected brisket and painted them on to the prettier (slightly drier) slices from the non injected brisket and turned in a box using the non injected brisket slices painted with fab b lite brisket juice and chunks from the point of the Fab B Lite brisket. Again, the judges thought higher of this than we did, but we may end up doing the same thing at our next comp.
I guess at the end of the day out of the new things we tried, the one I wouldn't compete without is the YardBird Rub, that stuff is just great on chicken, and not to shabby on other stuff as well. Hope someone gets some good out of this, just wanted to report back after a comp.
First off Chicken:
In this catagory we saw the second most improvement, and were pleased the most personally from the finished product. We were brining our chicken, using a homemade rub and then saucing with a sweet thick red sauce. For this comp we injected with FAB C, used Plowboys' Yardbird Rub and the same thick sweet red sauce. The FAB C basically did what brineing was doing with half the effort. The chicken was some of the most moist we have ever done. Our final thoughts on the FAB C was that it was worth the money to save us the time of brining at a comp. For home use we will probably stick with brineing. We swapped over to YardBird Rub and couldn't be happier. The flavor layers that rub has really showed up in the finished product we loved it and the judges did as well. We will be using a lot of this stuff in the future and I would reccomend trying it out. We finished 21st out of 72 teams. We were estatic with those results considering we had been placing in the 40s and 50s.
Brisket:
This is where we really made some leaps and jumps, to our suprise. We thought the brisket was OK, but not great. The judges gave us a 17th out of 72. That is the highest we've placed in any meat event and knocked our socks off. We beat Mike Davis and Lotta Bull, that was something on my personal 'to do list' and I never expected it to come this quick. We cooked two briskets both from our butcher, Angus, Choice dry aged. Both were rubbed with the same rub. One was injected with FAB B Lite and one was not. At the end of the cook the inject brisket was way, way juicer and also was darkened by the injection. The non injected brisket had a better look to it, and sliced easier. Whe collected the juices from the injected brisket and painted them on to the prettier (slightly drier) slices from the non injected brisket and turned in a box using the non injected brisket slices painted with fab b lite brisket juice and chunks from the point of the Fab B Lite brisket. Again, the judges thought higher of this than we did, but we may end up doing the same thing at our next comp.
I guess at the end of the day out of the new things we tried, the one I wouldn't compete without is the YardBird Rub, that stuff is just great on chicken, and not to shabby on other stuff as well. Hope someone gets some good out of this, just wanted to report back after a comp.
