Speaking Of Flashbacks. . .

Let's hop in the time machine and return to May 15, 2009.

The Memphis in May BBQ festival was a rousing success. According to the organizers this was a slightly down year concerning the number of teams entered in the event, but this did not stop large crowds from turning out and certainly did nothing to mute the fierce competition.

Last year's 2nd Place Ribs finalists, The Sassy Sows, had their game faces on when Beatrice and I arrived on Saturday morning and their ribs looked great, tasted even better, but unfortunately, they didn't place this year.

Hard luck, but sometimes it is luck to end up in the finals. Although, it cannot be ignored that they have placed in three of the last four years. But it was not to be for the girls this year. Irregardless, the ladies did a fine job and their hospitality and fun-loving demeanor are always 1st Class and 1st Place!!

Ubon's "Champion's Choice" BBQ Team elected to enter the shoulder category this year. We saw "Big Brain" Campbell on Friday night for a brief moment as he was tending to his shoulders and on Saturday, we didn't see the whole team until after the judging was over. Gary and his daughter Leslie, who incidentally is expecting a baby soon, were all there, hospitable as always and invited us to sample the pork shoulder.

Gary, by the way, was featured on Fox and Friends this past Friday morning as his team was preparing for the Big Apple BBQ something or other up there. Steve Doocy of Fox News, jackass extraordinaire, tried his best to trip Gary up with his sarcastic badgering, but Gary faced him down and it was all over after Doocy put a piece of the shoulder in his mouth. His face said it all.



Did I mention that Gary is a champion? I don't know where I get that idea from. . .


Being a professionally trained culinarian, I am quite fussy about the things I put in my mouth, well, food-wise anyway, and the shoulder Ubon's presented this year was absolutely phenomenal! Perfectly cooked, tender, well-formed "bark" on the exterior, moist and simply divine! I've cooked many a pork shoulder, but even with all my training, book learning and practical experience, I've never produced anything that comes within 10 miles of those shoulders. Well done Ubon's!!

Once the judging was over the crowds proceeded to the awards area, which was ankle deep in slimy mud, but that didn't stop the celebrating as the individual teams were crowned in the various categories.

Ubon's placed third in the shoulder category and I'm sure must have been disappointed after all the blood, sweat and beers, er, I mean tears, but a win is a win and next year is just around the corner.


The surprise hit of the event, at least for us, was the formation of a new cooking team from New York, succinctly called Jubon's. I'll ask that you go to Leslie's website for the full story of the beginnings of this new phenomenon.

Jubon's entered in the Patio Porkers ranks and walked away with a 4th place trophy! Great job Jubon's!

UPDATE: From the comment section of a previous post about Jubon's, Alexandra, whom I must assume is one of the Jubonettes, adds this:

the new york jubon's team is made up of: david rosen, adam rosen, brian jay and bob-o livingston!!!! we were just in memphis for the 2009 competition and won 4th place in patio porkers.

Names+faces = people! Paging Dr. Rosenrosen!

As for the Sassy Sows?

They lack nothing in the way of pride, friendliness and support for their fellow competitors. And I'm sure that they've already hatched a plan to capture next year's crown. Crafty little ladies they are!

And Beatrice? Well, she had a blast as this picture may attest.

Looking forward to next year's event Beatrice? I think you are!

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The Equation. . .

Beer³ + Memphis In May BBQ Festival x No Sleep = Good Times!

Today I find myself in Memphis as my friends with the Sassy Sows and Ubon's cooking teams square off against the world. For those of you not in the know, just type either of those names in the search box in the left hand corner.

As for Beatrice and I, we are trying to shake the cobwebs out and chipped the dried mud away from our toenails from last nights visit to the competition. For days it has been raining in Memphis and this year's event has been casually, but rightfully changed to the Memphis in Mud Event. It's a sump hole.

Anyway, to those of you who have been stopping by expecting one of my random and potentially vulgar rants or a funny story about my cats, I apologize for the long absence. Life has a curious way of cutting you to pieces and disassembling you to the base robotic animal. Work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep.

Cheers to all of you and please stayed tuned as Beatrice and I further investigate the goings on at the Memphis in Mud Intenational BBQ Contest.

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Low And Slow. . .

This picture means one thing and one thing only. Pork fat. And lots of it!!


Yes indeed humans, it's almost time for the 2009 Annual Memphis in May World Champion BBQ Cooking Contest. A long weekend worth of fun, music, food and drinking. Did I mention drinking? Last year's contest was a rousing success, or at least the parts I remember, and this year should be no different.

Hundreds of BBQ teams, from professional to back porch amateurs, will be competing for thousands in cash prizes, but more importantly, the pride that comes with being a winner.

In 2008, my friends, the Sassy Sows, came in 2nd place in the world for their deliciously slow cooked, slightly sweet and spicy pork ribs. As their unofficial/official good luck charm I have been advised that my presence is a must. And I won't let you down ladies.

Naturally, Ubon's was there also, and I made some good friends with Gary Roark and his daughter Leslie and their long-time fire stoker extraordinaire, Big Brain Campbell. Nice folks and can't wait to meet up with them again in a few weeks. Maybe it'll be a good time to share my super-sekrit, hairbrained, wishful-thinking, good idea with them!

Nevertheless, if you can find your way to Memphis and the calender be sayin' May, stop on by the riverfront for some good times, good food and thousands of drunk people all getting along.

Hey Beatrice, better get your drinking shoes on baby!

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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):

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Sunday Recipe. . .

This past weekend the gals of the Sassy Sows BBQ cooking team took their traveling road show down to Vidalia, Louisiana to open up a can or two of whoopass on the competition at the Jim Bowie Festival. Stop by Torture and Bliss for a wrapup of the challenge.

Linder was nice enough to invite me along and were I not up to my elbows in brown, tan and gray sandy, silty clay this weekend, I would have tagged along happily. Maybe I'll attend the Heavenly Hogs Championship Contest this weekend up in Madison.

Anyways. . .in honour of my favorite gals, I whipped up a few ribs of my own using my time tested cheating ways to produce fine, top-quality BBQ ribs in about 1/3 the time. Cheater cheater pumpkin eater, yeah I know. . .screw you.

I'm not going to give away my recipe as I would never share anything I've ever learned watching the Sassy Sows or Brian, Leslie, Gary and the gang with Ubon's, so a quantitative recipe for my sauce you will not find, but a damn quick technique for making fine succulent ribs you will find.

Here we go. . .

This time I felt taking the sauce in a bit of an Asian direction as I think the bright and sweet qualities of the ginger and soy meld quite well with a 1 hour ride over a little hickory wood and charcoal. For the sauce I might have used the following ingredients, quantities not included:



ginger
garlic
soy sauce
lemon juice
orange juice
white vinegar
sugar
fish sauce
hoisin sauce
cilantro
onion
carrot
celery
ketchup
whole grain mustard
and for ambiguity. . .various natural flavors

More or less, I sauteed the ginger and garlic in a large pot and as you can see I used a quite low-sided and wide pot. This style of cooking vessel facilitates evaporation and improves our cooking time, which is our goal because we are lazy, right?



Add the oil to a hot pot, add the ginger and garlic, saute briefly to release the aromatic oils and add the mirepoix. Be careful not to burn the garlic and ginger. If you do, start over and spank your own ass for being too lazy. Mind your business with a wooden spoon as I have done. You see that spoon, don't you Beatrice?

Saute the mirepoix for several minutes, you know, translucent onions and such. You know that don't you? Add the wet ingredients, lifting any fond you may have created, then add the ribs, cover with water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, skim the inevitable scum that will rise and simmer your ribs for about an hour.


Keep an eye on them at this point, stick a fork in them, when the meat just starts to release from the bone with some force on your part, remove them from the liquid. Remember, you'll still need some time on the grill for these babies, don't overcook them.

After removing the ribs, continue to reduce the cooking liquid, constantly skimming for fat and coagulated meat junk. It's there. Get it.

When your sauce has reduced by half and begins to thicken, now is the time to correct the balance. A little sugar here, a little vinegar there, maybe some more soy for salt. Fix it here and reduce a little bit further. It should be the consistency of a glaze and not nearly as thick as a BBQ sauce. This reduction will serve the dual-purpose of basting and saucing at the same time on the grill.

In the meantime, make your fire in the grill for indirect heating and let it burn down to medium low heat. We will control the cooking temperature by the addition of the hickory chunks every now and then. Slather a little oil on your ribs and ease them onto the grill. Close the cover and go get a beer. If you're lucky like me, the two mental giants who like to come by and kill deer at your place will stop by and irritate the crap out of you to the point where you want to go hide in the bathroom for an hour.

But don't do that! Keep an eye on your ribs, but don't be impatient either. Let them smoke over that low heat and keep the smoke rolling. Flip them over occasionally, move them front to back, stack them, keep them happy.



Baste every 15 minutes. . .more if you like, but 15 is a good tempo. We don't want to interfere with the fire too much. After about an hour, I like to open the grill, heat the fire up a good bit to get some nice caramelization for the last couple of bastings. And if the gods of cookery are with you, your ribs will look something like this:



Slap them puppies on a plate with some Asian-inspired cole slaw, then go slap yo' momma. She'd be mighty proud.


Now, where's that wooden spoon? And has anyone seen my whisk?

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Breaking BBQ News. . .

This past weekend, Ubon's BBQ of Yazoo City competed in the Kansas City Barbeque Society sanctioned event, Grillin' For Life, at St. Joseph's Catholic School in Madison, Mississippi. This was the first time Ubon's has competed in a KCBS event and as team member Brian said, "You never see the judges, and they never see you. You can have a dirty ass area, and noboby knows or cares, which we think is unsociable as hell." Indeed.

The KCBS event is different from Memphis Barbeque Network events in that teams must cook at least one, if not all, of the following: beef brisket, chicken, pork ribs and pork shoulder. All finished products are judged on a "blind basis" as there is no "on-site" judging. And I have to agree with Brian about it being unsociable. The whole idea of BBQing is the social aspect. You'd think the judges would want to get involved, but alas, they are the ones making the rules.

Nevertheless, with on-site or blind judging, it doesn't really matter to Ubon's, because they kick BBQ ass everywhere they go. After some 30-odd Grand Championships, they can add another notch to their belt in the form of overall first place at the Grillin' For Life Competition! Awesome job Ubon's!!!!!!

The full results can be found here and more info at full-blooded, Ubon family member Leslie's blog, Mississippi Barbecue Princess. Also, Leslie features a video of Brain and his famous post-win, X-Man pose. Something to behold. I think.

Great job Ubon's!!! And sorry I wasn't their to lend support, maybe at the next competition.

Leslie's pictures of the event are here.

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And The Winner Is??

Well, it's over and my liver is ecstatic. Two days of hardball drinking and partying at the Memphis in May BBQ Competition were well worth the price of admission (free, thanks Darell and Kay!) and I'm sure I shaved a year or two off my life. Hey, you can't live forever.

One special highlight was an impromptu tasting of various moonshines at another team's tent. They shall remain nameless as we wouldn't want the revenuers coming after them. They had several flavors and we tried peach, muscadine and some other one I just couldn't identify. It might have been because I felt like I drank battery acid after the peach one and for anyone who says moonshine is smooth has clearly never tried the stuff. Yet, it works. Almost too well!

Now to The Sassy Sows. Man, what a crew!

The competition was mighty fierce with approximately 200 teams competing in three divisions, whole hog, shoulder and the Sassy's forte, ribs. I saw some incredible cooking apparati with the most unique being a Belgian team's open pit, double spit that can cook two hog halves in about 5 hours. Brutally hot in the Memphis weather.

The Sassy Sows naturally do not need some over the top cooking equipment and they maintained a calm and steady flow of work throughout the day with their simple approach. 21 racks of ribs in two smokers. A piece of cake. When it came time to judge, the ribs were simply dead on perfect. Everything in it's place, right gals?

For me, I just continued to drink all day, filled with a calm satisfaction as I watched them tend to the business of cooking ribs. I asked each lady repeatedly throughout the day how they were feeling: confident, scared, concerned. . .they were cool as ice. As a veteran of culinary competitions, I know and can see and feel the confidence or lack thereof during these events. The energy is palpable. The Sassy Sows had it, they simply just had it. Not a worry or care in the world.

After the prelims were over, we waited. And waited. And waited some more until the decision finally came down. They made it to the finals with eight other teams!! As you can imagine, the all-female team erupted with glee and pleasure! I've never heard so much screaming and screeching, whooping and hollering in all my life. Yes, I whooped and hollered too! The excitement was infectious!! They had thirty minutes to get their business back together.

What had been an afternoon party in the tent turned into a madcap race to clean the place back up and get everything ready for the final judging. It was a collective effort by many, many people. Vacuuming, wiping, garnishing, plating and then they ran us all out on the sidewalk. Peanut gallery would have been too polite a word for us!


We sat by the river and waited for the judges who arrived promptly, which is more than we can say for the second judge of the preliminary round. He was thirty minutes late and shall we say a touch hungover.

The finals judges were greeted with the typical Sassy Sows hospitality, and attitude I might add. And in fifteen minutes, it was over.

We roused up the peanut gallery for a thundering applause chanting SAS-SY SAS-SY SAS-SY.

And as you can see we made quite the impression with one of the judges.


I like to think we played an integral part in the judges final decision, but you know even if we didn't, I'm positive the girls loved the support!

After the judging was over we moved to the stage area for the announcements of the winners in each division. After thirty grueling minutes they finally got to the rib category. And one by one the presenters rattled off the names. 9th Place, 8th Place, 7th Place, each name gone a little more excitement from the team. . .5th Place, 4th Place, still no Sassy Sows, 3rd Place and finally 2nd PLACE IN THE WORLD FOR BBQ RIBS. . .THE SASSY SOWS!








I'm really proud of my gals and wholly appreciate that they let me be involved in the fun. Congratulations ladies, you absolutely deserve it!

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Good News. . .

waking up drunk is a blessing in disguise.

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Reason Number Four Million. . .

two-hundred seventy-eight thousand and six: beer.

Tomorrow I am off to Memphis for the Memphis in May festival of BBQ, beer, music and hijinks. The Sassy Sows will be competing again this year and let's hope they are able to pull it off this time around. Last year, they were within a frog's hair of winning the rib competition. So close. . .but second place does not a champion make. I've got faith in my gals though. They have moxie. And having moxie sounds cool and I like it.

This year, they are energized, prepared, ready to dominate and I'll be there to document the whole performance. That is, of course, barring any unforeseen circumstances, like jail, puking in the BBQ sauce, falling into the river, breaking a leg, punching the Memphis in May Queen in the boob or anything of the like. I suspect that it'll be a grand ol' time for everyone involved.

I don't know how much I'll be able to blog until I return on Sunday, so in the meantime, pay a visit to some blogs I like to read:

The Jawa Report
View From The Porch
The World of Greasywrench
Ace of SpadesHQ
Cute With Chris
JammieWearingFool
SondraK
IMAO
The Daily KOS Go ahead, click it, you know you want to.

Breaker 1-9 Road Hawg, you copy?

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Three Little "Piggies". . .

Today, I had the privilege of meeting and hanging out with "The Sassy Sows" who are an interesting group of gals with one common purpose. . .PORK RIBS!!!

They have been competing in local and regional BBQ contests for about three years now and as you can see from the photo below have won several competitions and placed 4th in the rib category at the coveted Memphis In May cookoff.


I've never been to any of these competitions until today, but I have friends involved in the judging through MBN and who have encouraged me to go through the process of being certified to judge or possibly to compete, which sounds exciting. Really, I'm only interested in having another reason to drink Heineken on the weekend.

The Sassy Sows were smooth and in control during the run-up to the judging and I must admit as a veteran of many culinary competitions myself, the girls were well prepared! The tension was palpable, but there was nothing to fear. . .there are few constants in the Universe: gravity, life and death, and the Sassy Sows!!




Once the judges arrived is when "real" grease came out.



When you enter The Sassy Sows pig pen, it's all on! Full service BBQ at it's finest! An explanation of the equipment, the type of smoking wood used, techniques, etc. . .



a tasting. . .



I saw a couple of teams there with elaborate trailers, electronic monitoring, high dollar sponsors like Georgia-Pacific, blowers for fire boxes, blah blah.

The Sassy Sows? I think I heard one of them say we don't need all that "stuff".



Their recipe for success is: combine two small smokers, 100 pounds of smoking wood, 1 fine BBQ sauce, 27 cups of cultured Mississippi ladies and a half cup of edgy whoopass. Mix well, let simmer and stand back!

No judge left The Sassy Sows without a smile.



And some spectators even wanted to take a little Sassy Sow home with them.



So, did they win? Well, ya'll just gotta stay tuned! I'll let ya know soon.

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