Turn-in box pics

Nah, it's not the greens that are effecting your score. No eye pop. The brisket looks verrrry dry!

As a judge, I find the appearance criteria perplexing as well.
Supposedly you are to judge first for anything that would disqualify the entry. I get that.
On appearance it is vague and seems to boil down to is it appealing to my eye.is it appetizing.
Now at the same time, uniformity is not a criteria but I believe it does play a big role.
So different judges applying what I believe is a highly subjective criteria will differ.
Appearance of some moisture I think helps also. Yours seem to be a bit lacking there.but it is a picture not real life so perhaps not.
I think greens are irrelevant.technically it is not even required and only serves as contrast to
Highlight the entry.

Yes that does look better, but it also shows the raged edges on the 1st piece(bottom right), 4th piece(left end), and 6th piece(left end).

With that many teams, I would wonder if the judges could be instructed to be a little more critical than in smaller contests to create a little more disparity in scoring. Just a thought!

Two 7s and the rest 8s for brisket appearance is not "all over the board." I'd give the box a 7 or an 8 for appearance. BABE's comments may seem nit picky, but they are accurate. Details matter.

Just my 2 cents worth, but with Brexit devaluation may not be worth that. :shock:

Judging from a picture gives much more time to study, and nit-pick so understand my comments may be what a judge happened to focus in on in the 5 to 10 seconds that the box was presented to them.

The chicken to me the color is uneven, some areas look good color, but others are pale. My example is the lower right piece. Also look at the top left piece, it has sauce drips (runs) that stand out to me on the lower left corner of that piece. The size uniformity is ok, I don't usually pay as much attention to size as I do to balance, which to me your box is fine. Greens I pay very little attention to. So if as a judge when the box was shown to me, if I immediately focused on the top left, or lower right piece I would think you needed a little more quality control. Based on staring at the picture, I would probably score a 7. At the table with less time it might have scored 8.

The brisket I think Burnt covered the ragged ends, and I know many cooks spend time with tweezers and Q-tips to pick off the black specks on the face of the meat. If it looked dry at the table, I could see scoring a 7, but easily could have been 8 also.

Hope this helps.

I would give both of them 7 on appearance and If I turned in those boxes I'd expect them. the chicken just doesn't pop. lacking color. Brisket looks dry and over cooked. The ends of your slices are flaking apart, I get the feeling that if I were to grab a slice it would fall apart.

We all agree that garnish is optional and not supposed to be judged, but in truth I think everyone can agree it will impact your score one way or another. We were doing the green leaf lettuce wheels last year, and I sure hope I dont come across wrong but ours didnt look as ragged as what i am seeing in the pictures. Not supposed to be judged but in my opinion rough garnish makes the box look rough, brings out the flaws. Tight garnish makes box pop, looks like someone spent a lot of time on box even if they did not. One of the reasons we went from the lettuce wheels is because it is easier to hide blemishes in other garnish, so in truth your garnish may be why your scores arent where they were in the past.

I think others have pointed out the flaws with the chicken and brisket and why scores are all over the place. Keep in mind those scores are not bad but in todays KCBS a 7 will kill you. To me if you remove the black specs on the brisket I would give an 8 in the 5 seconds i get to look at it. I actually like the look of it if I dont notice the flaws.

The point I am making is with the unjudged garnish and spec and crumbly sides uneven sauce on chicken etc. attention to detail makes the difference in a 7 and an 8 and from an 8 to a 9.

You have more guts than me putting out turn in boxes for this crew!

If I were judging these, I'd give you an 8 or a 9. The cook obviously took the time to put samples in the box with care. A box has to be pretty durn sloppy to earn a bad appearance score from me. One thing I'd point out is symmetry is important, balance the amount of green you have showing all around the product.

You said the brisket was juicy. Great! But for appearance it has to LOOK moist to get 9s

Good luck out there!

I'm pretty sure that Lenexa wasn't 100% CBJ's, so you really can't use it for a good gauge of your talents. The difference between 8's and 9's are the very small details. I'd say we take 3-4 minutes touching up our boxes and looking over it real close.

If I had that brisket box to work with, I'd have taken about 3/4" off the slices on the left side. Very few judges will dock you for not pretrimming your brisket to the box width. You'll find that the narrow side gets flaky when the thick side is perfect.

In a couple years you'll look over your old box pics and shake your head, I know I do with mine.

Lenexa is no where near 100% CBJ. Lenexa has a lot of dignitary and "VIP" judges as well as other randoms. We had a chicken entry that received 9's from most of the table and one judge scored it a 2. We've never in a decade of doing contests received a two. I'm certain the judge bit into a moist piece of chicken, saw the pink color you get with properly smoked chicken and assumed, as some do, it wasn't fully cooked.

Point being, you may want to toss your Lenexa scores in the trash and use scores from other contests to make adjustments.

Stabone said:

That is true. I heard that the majority of judges were not...which is crazy. Isn't Lenexa the state championship???

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Pretty much every contest on the planet is a state championship.

I think you are close. I'd score both of these a solid 8 and possibly a 9 in person.

Stabone said:

Haha, well.....that's pretty generous of you! I know the boxes need some work. The chicken was a disaster and I had to get creative to get the skin so it wasn't leathery. I had 10 minutes to turn in and had to put them i a pan with sauce on the Webber to try and soften the skin. Honestly, I'm surprised they came out as good as they did. Flavor was there but the color and "pop" that was missing is typically better than this. I've just been trying to focus more on taste and tenderness lately.

The brisket, for us, was great. The guy that does brisket for us has come a long way. He used to insist on cooking with hedge...yes, hedge, and he refused to inject his brisket no matter what. We finally got him convinced that he absolutely must inject, not use hedge (although he still tries), changed his rub and has started using a decent mop when he wraps. We are used to finishing pretty poorly in brisket, so 58 out of 185 is a major improvement.

I will continue to pick the brains of the guys who taught us, as well as using this forum to get some pointers from some of you guys. If I read between the lines, I can sometimes pick up on a few tips/secrets!!!

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I cook around the KC area a few times a year, please come introduce yourselves some Friday evening, we could have a few drinks and talk about brisket if you would like to.