Well, it seemed like there was some interest in following along with us this year, so I’m going to start this post and add to it as we go through the season.

To start, a little background on the team. There’s 5 of us - myself, my wife, and 3 other guys - who all were athletes at various levels when we were younger. As we got older and fatter, playing soccer, basketball and football were becoming less of a possibility at a competitive level, and were looking for an outlet for that competitive spirit.

So, in 2012, we signed up to compete in the American Royal World Series of BBQ. This is the largest BBQ competition in the world, drawing teams from Europe, Asia, and all over North America to compete here in KC for a world championship. We didn’t think we’d do anything like win that our first time out, and we were excited to have a weekend with the boys (plus my wife) and hang out and have some beers while making food.

Well, we didn’t win. We didn’t come close. But we did beat 20% of the field and had an absolute blast doing it. We decided to keep going forward and do a few more of these the next year.

Fast forward to today, and we have evolved. We realized there’s a lot cheaper ways to drink beer with your friends, and that if we wanted to keep doing these things we needed to get serious about it, or quit. We chose to get serious. We have been that way for about 3 years now, and we finished last year ranked 24th overall in the world, and 8th in pork, and in the top 20 in brisket and ribs, and top 50 in chicken #frickenchicken

So I’ll be chronicling our adventures this year, which already is promising to be interesting. I did a steak contest last weekend, and we have our first BBQ comp this weekend, and a double the weekend after. After that the next 5 we were scheduled to do have either moved their date, or postponed still due to the pandemic (no comment). I wonder if some of them are looking for a reason to not do it, but I also know that a lot of these are put on by either non-profits or city parks departments, etc, and none of them can really afford the bad press that comes with holding a food contest during a pandemic and then people potentially getting sick. Plus, many rely on the public turnout to turn a profit, so I get it.

In the next post, I will recap the steak contest I cooked last weekend, including some pics. Thank you to everyone who reads a follows along, and if you want to hit us up on the socials we are @meatrushmorebbq on everything, but mainly Facebook and Instagram.

Last weekend the American Royal put on their first ever Backyard BBQ competition, and steak cookoff. Backyard competitions are typically 2 meat affairs (chicken and ribs), and are a great way for people to get their feet wet in competition bbq without feeling like they are going up against the “big boys.” We do not qualify for a backyard contest, as we’ve done too many of the “master series” or “pro” competitions, and won too much. However, the steak contest was open to all, so I paid the entry fee and went down to Hale Arena in KC to cook some steak, and try and win some cash.

Cooked the steaks on my PK Grills TX, with Grill Grates over Royal Oak briquettes (we always use RO charcoal, it’s my favorite charcoal - and I’ve tried a lot of them). Steak contests are nice, because the meat is provided, it’s a short, one day cook, and who doesn’t want to eat some steak? Usually, the steak you’re given is a ribeye, and you draw for what order you pick your steaks in. It then works as a snake draft, so if you get the first pick, you get the last pick for your second steak. Right in the middle is generally where you want to be. You can get a pretty good steak the first time, and they’re not all picked over the second.

I got the final pick in the first round, which means I got back to back picks. Instead of ribeyes, these were strip steaks. I’m not going lie - I don’t really eat strip steaks. I rarely go out for steaks, and if I’m cooking one at home, I’m not going to let the $3 or whatever a ribeye might cost more than a strip deter me from buying what I really want. It had been years since I cooked a strip. I wasn’t super confident in what I was going to do, but I put a plan together.

I got some of the exterior fat trimmed off, and got it into a shape I thought would cook more evenly. I then whipped up a marinade with Beef Consume, some spices, and a tenderizer and let that set for a bit. I then rubbed it, and got the fire going.

Cooked the first, practice steak, and overshot the doneness just a tad after carryover, so I backed it down a couple degrees in order to keep it more moist and tender.

Then it was boxing time. This is where my wife is Queen. She sees things that I just never pick up on and is able to make those adjustments to make sure that we are presenting the best looking entry we can.

AND…off to turn ins

Then we got to relax and wait for awards. Ended up taking home 3rd place, which I was happy with. I didn’t feel as comfortable with the strip as I would have been a ribeye, and I don’t think I nailed tenderness. The judges mostly agreed giving me good, but not great scores in tenderness though they all really liked the taste and appearance.

Next up is BBQ in Olathe KS this weekend!

Emptied my shopping cart during the livestream yesterday. So awesome that it came today with the free shipping!

Wish I could double like the blue hats…congrats to all, and thank you for making this such a welcoming place. In January I had decided I wanted to learn sausage making so that I had something to do with my trimmings. I found this site through some of the YouTube videos, and I started reading, trying to make sense of it all. You have all helped me learn so much. Now, my wife would like it if you didn’t convince me to spend so much money, but - I also know she secretly likes it when she gets to eat!

After cleaning up and loading up, we headed down to the awards ceremony, to await our fate. We ended up taking 2nd in both ribs and pork, each one within a point of a perfect score. We were hit pretty good on chicken and brisket though, and landed 19th out of 70 teams overall. When you’re competing in a field like this, the margins for error are tiny. We were only a couple scores outside of the top 10, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Up next we have a double this weekend, and it’s what we call a “rolling double” which means we’ll cook Saturday, clean up, and head to another contest to cook Sunday. It’s a ton of work, but we get a chance to take one day of PTO on friday and cook 2 contests, so we like to do them when we can.

Thanks for reading!

This didn’t suck

As someone new to this hobby, and new to Walton’s, I do hope that you keep your YouTube presence up, simply because that’s how I found you, and the quality of the videos and the information led me here, and, ultimately, to spending the first $300 of what I assume will be many hundreds of dollars with your store. Now that I’ve found you, that won’t change without YouTube, but I am sure there are many like me who have not found you who would be good customers out there lurking in YT land, maybe not even realizing they want to process meat yet.

We knew that we would finish high in the overall rankings, based on the 3 high calls. We didn’t know where our chicken landed though, and there was a team with 4 top 10s, as well as one with a 1st, 2nd, and 4th, so we weren’t sure where we would land, but figured top 5 for sure, and probably top 3. I figured 2nd or 3rd.

As they were reading off the top 10, they called our friend Bill our of Texas for 3rd (he had the 1,2,4), and I was prepared to get up to walk up for Reserve Grand Champion. However, they called the 4 call team…and then called us for overall Grand Champions.

A little bit of a Walton’s tie in here. Kelly, who won RGC (in the pic below in the cowboy hat) has a reputation for his sausage making. When I decided to get into it, the first thing I did was sign up for one of his sausage classes, and then started scouring the web and youtube. That’s when I came across Walton’s. I loved the YouTube videos, I had browsed the website, and I liked what I saw, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger on anything. During his class, he mentioned Walton’s as being a great resource for buying supplies, and how he orders from there frequently. That sealed it in my mind, which led me to this community, which led you to reading my ramblings. So, without this guy, I may not be here right now.

State Center, IA this weekend! Ready to get up there and do some cooking!

It’s always a good day when the UPS man brings a Walton’s box!

I’m a banker during the day. I manage a branch, and generally enjoy it. I’m not any good at playing politics, so that has hurt me in the past, but I do enjoy what I do, especially my interactions with small business owners and helping them achieve their dreams.

Looks great! Nice job

Agree with the above. Vac sealing and freezing the finished product would be most convenient later. If you don’t mind thawing and cooking, then I do that a lot of times with no issue.

Frequently I buy enough thighs for 4 or 5 competitions at a time, trim, and then seal and freeze to save work week of. Can’t tell the difference.

I’m glad everyone is enjoying it. It’s been fun reflecting on things after the fact a little deeper and figuring out how to verbalize (or type) what happened and what I’m thinking.

It’s always a good day when the UPS man brings a Walton’s box!

We knew that we would finish high in the overall rankings, based on the 3 high calls. We didn’t know where our chicken landed though, and there was a team with 4 top 10s, as well as one with a 1st, 2nd, and 4th, so we weren’t sure where we would land, but figured top 5 for sure, and probably top 3. I figured 2nd or 3rd.

As they were reading off the top 10, they called our friend Bill our of Texas for 3rd (he had the 1,2,4), and I was prepared to get up to walk up for Reserve Grand Champion. However, they called the 4 call team…and then called us for overall Grand Champions.

A little bit of a Walton’s tie in here. Kelly, who won RGC (in the pic below in the cowboy hat) has a reputation for his sausage making. When I decided to get into it, the first thing I did was sign up for one of his sausage classes, and then started scouring the web and youtube. That’s when I came across Walton’s. I loved the YouTube videos, I had browsed the website, and I liked what I saw, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger on anything. During his class, he mentioned Walton’s as being a great resource for buying supplies, and how he orders from there frequently. That sealed it in my mind, which led me to this community, which led you to reading my ramblings. So, without this guy, I may not be here right now.

State Center, IA this weekend! Ready to get up there and do some cooking!

Brisket was interesting. We go back and forth on whether to turn in burnt ends or not. Part of the issue is that there is not a standard to aim for with burnt ends. With slices, there are tests that judges use to judge tenderness and if you hit your marks on cooking it correctly, but burnt ends are the wild west. Some people like them a little fattier, some more rendered, and each judge seems to grade burnt ends differently sometimes. We actually went about 2 years without turning them in, and recently have started doing it again and have seen success with it.

I didn’t think they were going to go in this week. The point was a little thin, and they seemed to not be cooking the way we wanted them to. We cubed them up though, and they were good, so we put them in. It was a good decision as we also finished in 1st in brisket, giving us 2 1sts and 3 top 5s in the contest.

Pork is pork. Pork has been so good to us for so long, until we get to boxing, it’s almost robotic. Same thing at the same time every time. After they’ve been wrapped for an hour, I check them, and I can usually tell you within 5 minutes of when they’ll be done. While I like the success that it brings, it’s made it less fun to cook, as it really has become a recipe, not a journey like some of the other meats. A recipe that you have to have the experience and the feel for from doing it the same way for so long, but a recipe nonetheless.

Here they are coloring up. We flip our butts halfway through the before wrapping stage to even out the color, and this is from right before I did that. You can see the money muscles that I trimmed out beforehand, and the one side is kinda pale. Once I flip it over, it will catch up and even out the color nicely.

This was an interesting turn in, that definitely made things “fun” (that’s code for stressful). 3 of the 4 money muscles, which we slice, were tough. Again, we’re talking fine lines here and the difference between tough and mushy is miniscule. However, I wasn’t comfortable turning them in. The other was close to mushy, but I knew if I sliced them thicker, they would work. The problem is getting 6 slices (one per judge) that are thick out of one muscle. Luckily, it all worked out and we were able to do so. We ended up winning pork, successfully defending our 1st place pork from last year at this contest.

Ribs continue to be a strong category for us, I really think the flavor on our drum smokers adds a flavor that hits the judges happy spot. Ribs, pork, and brisket all get fat dripping onto the fires that combust and give the meat a flavor that is pretty much impossible to recreate on another smoker.

Here they are about a half hour in, just waiting for them to color up before we wrap. This usually takes about 2 hours total.


After we wrap with butter, sauce, sugar, etc we put them back on for another 45 minutes to and hour until they reach tenderness. Then they rest untnil time to sauce, slice, box and give to the judges. We had one rack this time that was just way better than the others. All 4 were turn in worthy, but this one…something just jumped out about them. There was a bit of an issue with some fat on top of them, which made me not love the appearance, but we went with just the 6 bones across the box this time to only allow the judges to eat the best we had to offer.

These ended up 4th place.

Saturday morning when we got to our spot from the hotel, it was already 80 degrees, but being that it was 4:30 in the morning it felt comfortable with a slight breeze and no sunshine. so we got off and running with the big meats, which go on at 5:15.

Chicken continues to be our nemesis, but I thought the chicken we turned in this week was really, really good. I have a hard time writing much about it because, well, there isn’t much to tell. I’m going to try and get some prep pictures of it this weekend, so hopefully I’ll be able to do better next week. It finished 14th, but I really believe it deserved better.

OK, so this weekend we went to Wagoner, OK. As I mentioned last time, OK hasn’t been too kind to us recently, and it’s always stupid hot this time of year, but…we’re just gluttons for punishment, I suppose.

The temps throughout the day both days were high, but the humidity was staggering. We have a clock that we set up on the porch of our trailer, that includes weather. Now, our smokers are up there, etc, so it’s always hotter there than on the ground, but on that clock it was reading 103* and 39% humidity at one point Saturday. I drink a lot of water, and the heat usually doesn’t bother me too much, but by about noon on Saturday, I was feeling it and really dragging. Also, noon is when turn ins start - not the best time to be feeling bad. Luckily, turn in time means I can be inside where there is AC.

Friday night there was an SCA contest. I have struggled in every one of those I’ve done, but the more I do, the higher my scores get, I just need to get in a rhythm with them I think, and honestly I don’t do enough to do that. Combine that with I never cook my steaks at home to the doneness required in SCA, and, well, it’s nice to have something to do on a Friday at a BBQ contest.

This was probably the best tasting steak I’ve cooked in a contest. The appearance…not so much. I left my pins at home that I use to hold the steak together after trimming some of the fat out from between the eye and the spinalis, so I tried not trimming it out, and as the fat rendered it kinda fell apart. I don’t have a pic, because as my wife was getting her phone out to take one, I told her I didn’t want to remember a steak that looked that bad, although I used some more colorful language than that. I do have a pic of the set up though, with my Chiefs red PK named Patrick, ready to rock.

All and all, the steak finished 14th, and while we didn’t get a good appearance score, it certainly didn’t get hit the way it should have.