I hate competition style: Ribs, Bark, Chicken Skin, etc.

Lake Dogs

Lake Dogs

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I'm getting ready to crawl back into my hole, but until I do so I'd like to talk about peoples over-arching opinions and ignorant (which is lack-of-knowledge, not stupidity) generalizations regarding "competition BBQ".

Over time I've seen just about everything in "competition BBQ" bashed, from scoring systems, presentation, judges, timelines, and of course their definitions of BBQ and how it's judged.

Please know this: there are many sanctioning bodies. They define their game (if you will) so that judges know what to grade/score to. It's their attempt at trying to provide some objectivity to something extremely subjective. They each define their games very differently. None are right, and none are wrong; just that they each set their perfect performance standard different. It's like when we had multiple professional football leagues defining what was a valid catch differently...

I'm not saying that one particular sanctioning body doesn't have/host the majoring of sanctioned contests across the land. KCBS does. However, please dont discount all sanctioned (and unsanctioned for that matter) BBQ contests by how KCBS defines their game.

To which I say, if you dont like their game, try another. If you dont like how MBN defines its ribs, try KCBS, or visa. versa.


Saying something like "I hate competition ribs because I like mine to fall off the bone" assumes that all competitions, sanctioned and un, define their tenderness to one single standard, and nothing is farther from the truth.

Same for everything else. Dont like having to get crispy or bite-through skin on chicken, I suggest competing in competitions that dont have chicken. Dont like having to cook a whole hog, dont, compete in another that doesn't have whole hog as an event.


JMHO. Rant over. <--- as I waltz back to my hole
 
Woo Hoo! But, when I say I hate comp style ribs, I pretty much exclusively mean KCBS.:becky:




















Yeah. I said it. :drama::crazy::heh:


Got any spare room in that hole?
 
I think people also need to understand that if you are a competition cook, WHEN YOU ARE COOKING IN A COMPETITION, if you are NOT cooking to the expectation of the judges at that competition, then you are not likely to do well.

For instance, when we cook up chicken thighs at a comp and taste them when they go in the box (not the ACTUAL ones that are in the box, obviously :roll:) and I say, "That's good chicken." I'm referring to the taste ACCORDING to what we know to be the standard of the judging at the sanctioning body.

At home, I NEVER cook chicken like we do at a comp. NEVER. It's not that it's nasty, but it's not what I'd call "good chicken" generally speaking. It's overly sweet, soft skin, messy, etc. At home, I NEVER sauce chicken. EVER.



Competition cooks often don't particularly have a personal preference for what they put in the box, but we do it because it scores better than what we do prefer.

The whole competition score and taste experience comes down to one single bit. OF COURSE it's going to be "too much" sweetness, heat, etc. to eat at home.


Heck, if judges start looking for and scoring overcooked chicken wings, then that's what we'll start boxing. Call me a sell out, but we compete to win. It may not be "traditional BBQ" and it's certainly not backyard BBQ or restaurant BBQ. These things are all different for various reasons.
 
:heh:

I guess I'm also weary of all the "I just don't get competition Q" comments.



I don't mean this in a snobby way at all, but if you're a comp cook, you get it.
If you're not, you likely don't.
Heck I didn't get it until I started hanging around comps....


Competition BBQ is competition BBQ.
Backyard BBQ is very subjective. It's about what YOU like. You are SUPPOSED to only please your taste buds and your family and friends.
Try to cook that way at a comp (many have) and you'll know humility.
Then there's restaurant BBQ, which is, HAS TO BE, intended to please as many taste buds as possible to gain a customer base.


To compare one to the other or say one sucks more than the other is like saying one color is better or worse than the other. It's all relative and it's all different.



......back to my hole.....:twitch::becky::laugh:
 
I don't do the comp thing anymore, but when I did, the only thing I tried to do was find out what percent of the judges were CBSs, off the street, celebrity, or just took a class. The only difference any of that made was, if they were mostly CBJs, I stuck to KCBS instructions, if celebrity, or if more were off the street, I cooked more towards falling off the bone or overly tender brisket, if it was newly trained class of CBJs, it did not matter scores were going to be all over the place. For the most part I just cooked how I like things, and got a mixed bag of results but almost always was at least in the middle of the pack or higher. What I thought was my best, almost always turned out to be my worst scores and vice versa.

I would say its a crap shoot, but then you have those that win consistently, which means they are doing something much better than what I am doing.

For those that want to blast judges for the poor scores, or think the fix is in, are just poor losers and should not be there in the first place. Having been a CBS, I can tell you there is no fix at least at the table.
Dave
 
To the original post- word. As for the context of it all, people love to debate and be proud (and some what snobby) of what we hold close to us. I'm a competitive powerlifter, and there is always talk of gear vs. raw vs. drug free vs. who's mom is... ...well, you get the picture. Most of it is valid to the individual, and in the end, we're all after the same thing. We all love what we do, or there would be no debates. I say good stuff and keep it going.
 
As Lake Dogs already said, people need to understand there is a standard agreed upon and set by a group of people within an organization. It doesn't mean this is the end all, gospel truth standard. It just means within this organization, they have decided that "xyz" is their standard when judging.

I don't have any competition bbq experience but I've tasted bbq that was cooked to the standard. It is very different from what I cook because you only have "one bite" to impress a judge. Not an entire meal. So what I tasted was overly sweet and simply overly seasoned bbq for my taste. But I understand why they do that.
 
^^^ Yep, and that would be more the KCBSesque thing too. Judges in the sanctioning bodies that I'm a member of generally eat a little more than a bite. A good rib will be completely snarfed. The reason is that we're usually only judging 2 events vs. KCBS's 4. That overly sweet over seasoned one-bite-make-an-impression Q generally doesnt play as well if the judge is eating a little more (not always, but sometimes). Ergo how/why different competitions are just that, different. Over the last 10 years or so we have seen a little more sauce enter into the picture, but rarely have I seen the heavy-on-blues-hog rib and when I did they didnt score overly well (just too darned sweet and couldn't taste the meat).

Where'd I lose my darned hole?..... <SMACK>
 
I can't think of any other competition whether they be food related or otherwise where the criteria for judgement is quite different from the competitors' best achievable abilities.
 
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