Our Competition BBQ season starts next weekend in Salisbury, MD for their Pork in the Park event.  Due to the interest of TLC's TV show "BBQ Pit Master's" (TV Show participant Tuffy, of Cool Smoke will be competing)  entrants for the event has increased to over 130 teams which hopefully translates into a great event as we all want a piece of the $17,000 in prize money.  Last year, we managed an unexpected 1st place in Pork Shoulder, which was our first ever call-out, so we have a sentimental spot for Salisbury.

The team has added a new Big Green Egg smoker to the mix, which, in practice runs, has performed amazingly well, but we still need to understand its nuances.  Our 2 main cookers will now be the Stumps Smoker and the BGE.  The battle-worn Chargrill smoker has served us well, but it's time to upgrade to equipment that is more consistent and forgiving.  For starters, the BGE will cook chicken, with the Stumps carrying the rest of the load.  As we get accustomed to the Egg, it could help with the other meats if space becomes an issue.

Along with the Egg, we purchased a BBQ Guru CyberQ II pit controller which has the ability to control 2 pits and 2 foods and also track temperature curves of those variables in PC software.  If you happen to be a data junkie, check this toy out.

We'll be setting up our site on Friday the 16th and the actual turn-ins will be on Saturday the 17th.  If you are in the area and would love to smell and taste some fantastic BBQ come support the event and stop on over to see us.

On a side note, Burninghot BBQ now has a vendors licence and will be serving food at the Dover Days Festival on Saturday, May 1st.  Proceeds from this will help fund this year's BBQ competitions.

We're back in our home city for the final competition of the season.  At last count, 81 teams have registered (vs 72 for '08).  As it was last year, it is forecasted to be wet, windy and cold, so dress accordingly if you plan to visit.  We'll be almost directly across from last year's location and plan to have the same level of hospitality, so stop by our site if you are in the mood to socialize.

The summer has just been screeming by and I just realized that I hadn't posted an update in quite a while.  The team hasn't competed since our respectable 12th place finish in the Nation's Capital, but we've been prepping for the next one in mid September in Norwalk, CT.  We continue to fine tune our understanding of the new Stump's Smoker and have also put some effort into understanding the optimum way to rack our competition meats.  Going from the horizontal CharGrill to a vertical smoker has shown that the meats cook at different rates than before (duh). 

We're looking forward to the Norwalk cook of, not only for the competion, but becuase of many friends and family are in the area.  If it goes as planned, we'll have many new helpers getting their first taste of competition BBQ.

Next weekend is our next competion at the Safeway BBQ showdown, located 3 blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.  This promises to be an exciting event, judging from the teams that have already signed up for it.

Our last competion was an interesting one.  A brutal storm rolled in during the night, turning our site into a lake.  We literally had 2" of water throughout the site until about 9am on Sunday.  The all dirt infield to the race track didn't make matters any better.  The bright spot was that our new Insullated Stumps smoker performed flawlessly, maintaining perfect temperature throughout the downpour.  Had we been using our old smokers, we would have lost the fire and mostlikely all the residual heat stored in the metal housing.

While the smoker did exactly has we intructed it to, its precision was lost on the fact that we had only used it once before, so we are still learning how it will cook.  This week, we will be running tests on it to understand where in the smoker are the hot and cold spots, as well as learn where in the smoker we should locate the various meats.

Our next competion will be next weekend in Upper Marlboro, MD at the Beltway BBQ.  If you are in the area, please stop by our site and chat us up a bit.  As always, if we have samples available, we'll be sharing for the small price of your honest feedback.  We're new to this game, so we're constantly tweaking and looking for people's opinions.  Food turn in begins at Noon on Sunday.