Saskatchewan BBQ Championships

Team 58's good friend Rob Reinhardt from Prarie Smoke and Spice (the 2010 Canadian BBQ Champion) decided to put on the Saskatchewan BBQ Championships. We decided to attend. Pauley took off from Calgary on Saturday morning and head to bolt before the awards on Sunday. Colin came from Yorkton on Saturday and went back home Sunday. I loaded up the dogs and all the equipment on Thursday and headed off the Island on the 30 hour trek.......

The dogs may have had better times in there lives, exceptional company they were.

We all arrived on Saturday morning. Colin and I went and picked up the worse pizza either of us had ever tasted from a place called Verns and a pile of pilsner. Although Colin did try to buy some low carb bull shit beer until the girl at the counter mocked him into switching. After that we set up at the market in down town Saskatoon.

And Colin had a pop......

The only turn in on Saturday was a supplied pork loin. We didn't have much planned for it so we sliced it into chops. Brined it. Cooked down a marinara sauce with a pile of mushrooms and stuffed the chop with that mixture and cheese. Then we wrapped it in bacon, breaded it and grilled it. To finish it off we tossed it on a herb and garlic bun.

We didn't have a plan for presentation so Pauley ran too Mcdonalds, borrowed a tray and a few burger wrappers and we were set........

The judges didn't see our humor and gave us a 0 on presentation! That's hard to do. Needless to say we finished last in the optional pork loin category.....so it goes.......

After a little sleep we got the cookers fired up at about 3am, Paul loves smoke.......

Our meats weren't our best today but our presentation was different than the past. The pork was good but not cooking as fast as we would normally like.....

The head judge came and spoke to us and apparently our slices weren't cut all the way through and could not be judged so we were only judged on our chunks and pulled. Shockingly we still managed to finish 8th our of 24 teams. No call but still good.

In between the pork and brisket turn in the cops showed up and had the truck that was stolen and dropped off behind us the night before towed. They literally totaled this beast.

Our brisket came out ok. Not as tender as we would have liked but nice overall. Good smoke ring and decent size slices. We were ok with it but not thrilled. Luckily the judges were and we finished 3rd out of the 24 teams!

Next up was our chicken. For some reason we were still cooking our bigger thighs. They turned out perfectly thoug and we were thrilled with these puppies. So were the judges and they took 4th place!

Finally was the ribs. We kept the recipe and everything the same and nailed them! We Got all the slices off one rack and nailed the texture. The only issue was they were a little light in color, still darn good though.......The judges agreed and we managed to get FIRST place in ribs again!!

Since Pauley had to bolt Colin and I were the only ones around for the award ceremonies.

We managed to finish 3rd place overall. This was our most succesful comp of all time and we had a blast! Time will tell if we make that crazy trek to cook back in Saskatchewan again!

I stopped in Calgary during the trip home so Pauley could have the awards!