With A Side Of Jack Daniels Please. . .

Cooking competitions are tough enough, but add the name Jack Daniels to it and you've got a whole 'nother level of predicamentation. I'm making up words again.

Gary, Leslie, Brain (Brian actually, but I always type Brain, so from now on, it's Brain) and the gang of BBQ pirates known as Ubon's were invited to cook in the Jack Daniel's 20th Annual Barbecue Invitational held in beautimus Lynchburg, Tennessee.

78 teams from across the nation were invited for the BBQ extravaganza, all with a state championship under their belts . Our home state of Mississippi was represented by two teams, Ubon's out of Yazoo City and Natural Born Grillers from Olive Branch.

Brain and the gang are very well known for their specialty, which is whole hog cookery, but in this competition, the items are pork shoulder, ribs, brisket and chicken. If you ease over to Ubon's website, you can catch a glimpse of the seven or eight trophies they've won over the years. Actually it's more like 100 and 8 trophies plus or minus 50 or 60. Or as my old man likes to quantify large numbers: a bunch!

I've been in my fair share of cooking competitions, but mostly chef vs. other chef dabber-doos which are kinda the same, but not really. There is the preparation, the planning. The travel, possibly. The worry and the minute to minute dilemmas that invariably crop up. The unpredictable malfunction, the screw-up and the occasional destruction of something, whether it be food, machine, or person. Add to this mano a mano competing style, several hundred more cooks and helpers, then mix in about 72 hours worth of hardcore drinking and you've got the grim potential for monumental screw-ups!

But not with Gary, Leslie and Brain at the helm of the fire pit. Even with all the drinking, all the carryin' on, all the hijinks during the long hours of manning a slow-cooking dead animal, they've got the moxie, the wherewithal and the what-have-you to keep it between the charcoal briquettes and somehow, someway, somewhere they won 2ND PLACE PORK!!! (Thanks for the correction Linda! Somebody 'round here cain't read!)



*scratching head*

I guess they simply known 'dey bidness.

Congratulations to Team Ubon's for another great turnout! Good job!

Oh and one other item. . .Ubon's also won Grand Champion 2 weeks ago in Cleveland, Mississippi at Octoberfest, but you can read all about that over at Linder and Cudi's place.

At Cleveland (photo stolen from Linder's blog):