Harry’s Head on a StickSlap Yo Daddy BBQ pulled off a history making three-peat by winning the Way Out West Stockton (WOW) cookoff for the third year in a row. We finished 1st Ribs, 1st Pork, 2nd Brisket, and 8th Chicken amid a field of 30 teams.
In 2009, we won first place in all four meat categories which had never been done before in a sanctioned State Championship contest. The format of this contest was different as it was sanctioned by the Pacific North West BBQ Association (PNWBA) which included a one-hour interval instead of the 30-minute interval of KCBS sanctioned contests. The meat turn in order was also different and we turned in pork first at 11 am, followed by brisket, then chicken, and then finally ribs at 2 pm. It took a bit of juggling as the order we’re used to cooking is chicken, ribs, pork, and brisket. Since we have only two WSM pits, it needed some rethinking of how we were going to choreograph the entry and exit of the different meats into our WSMs.
On Friday evening, I hosted 25 students at a cooking school organized by Ric Gilbert the WOW organizer to introduce some VIPs to BBQ techniques and tips. We showed them how to cook ribs and served it with some SYD Asian Coleslaw. (see Recipes> Ric also cooked up some chicken, lamb chops, beans, and potato salad. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed the BBQ and lesson. On Saturday morning, I showed new teams how to make our Lazyman presentation boxes which we do in 20 minutes with less than $4.00 in parsley and lettuce. It was great to see so many new teams getting their feet wet in BBQ competition.
I cooked this event solo as my teammate Benny and his wife Shari were already in Vegas to set up for the Sunday $125K contest at the Orleans Hotel. Thanks to Howard Chi of The Smoked Chi team who arranged for one of his dental interns Janice to help me out. So I had a runner to bring my trays during the long walk to the judging tent which was a three-minute walk away.
I was en route to Vegas on Southwest when I learned from a live cell phone feed from Ben Lobenstein that we had won. I heard that someone made a photo cutout of me, and Howard walked on stage with my head on a stick.
With this win, we’re fortunate to have accumulated 5 GCs so we have two more to go to realize our goal of making it to the Jack Daniels Invitational in October 2011 which requires 7 GCs for an automatic invite instead of a lottery draw. The deadline to accumulate 7 GCs is August 31 so Benny and I will continue our full court press to meet our objective.
Many thanks to Ric Gilbert and Ben Lobenstein for organizing this awesome event. Thanks to the PNWBA officials Christene and Anthony who made the long trek to officiate this event. Congrats to all the teams who walked. Thanks to the Kyle for helping me load my van, the judges, City of Stockton, and helpers. A big thank you also goes to our sponsors. We plan to return in 2012 for maybe a four-peat?
