© 2010 Pigheaded BBQ

April 18-19, 2008

Pork in the Park BBQ

Salisbury, MD

Recap:

Well our first competition of 2008 is in the books. Do they still burn books? This was definitely not the way we wanted to start the year off. We finished 34th out of 85 teams. Not horrible, but certainly not how we wanted to finish.

As usual, Sandy Fulton and her crew did an outstanding job organizing the event. Salisbury is a first class event in all respects and is growing like mad. Space is starting to tighten up, as more teams join the party.

We got to the site about 9:00AM on Friday and met up with Piglickers BBQ, who was doing their first competition and set up next to each other.

Friday night turn ins were Perdue Chicken and Chefs Choice. Brian and Rob did a faux fried chicken that was very good and placed 18th. I did Asian Shrimp like last year, but the results were far from the same. Last year we finished 3rd , this year we finished 49th. Maybe something new next year.

Saturday was the usual entries: Chicken, Ribs, Pulled Pork and Brisket. We finished 52nd in chicken, tied for 72nd in ribs, 23rd in pulled pork and 16th in brisket. Our scores were all over the place, even in the same entry. We're not sure what went on, but were excited for the best brisket we ever cooked. After not doing well in brisket last year, we changed pretty much everything and it seemed to work. Now to see if we can duplicate it. The team worked well together and out timing was not bad at all for the first competition of the year.

Thanks guys for all the hard work. We had a lot of fun, met new people and made some new friends.

July 25-26, 2008

3rd Annual Chesapeake Bay BBQ

Stevensville, MD

Recap:

Stevensville is a nice place to visit with nice scenery, close location and the organizers of this contest are very nice people. That being said, Stevensville has not been such a great place for Pigheaded BBQ to compete. This is the second year in a row that we were embarrassed at the Chesapeake Bay BBQ Festival. While we did improve on three of the four main categories and had a nice article written in the News Journal, again we didn't place as well as we had hoped for.

We dropped in chicken though we thought it was good. We did improve in ribs which we all thought was vastly better than last years, but the biggest improvement was in pulled pork and brisket.

Our entries were light years ahead of last years and the scores showed that, but also showed that there's still room for improvement.

The weather was definitely nicer than last year and we always enjoy seeing our friends and fellow competitors. We had a good time and feel that we are improving as a team and are looking forward to our first time in New Holland, PA which is the site for our next competition.

August 22-23 , 2008

New Holland SummerFest

New Holland, Pa

Recap:

Wow is all I can say about this weekend. New Holland Summerfest, is our new favorite competition. We enjoyed perfect weather, a great venue, fantastic organizers and the best results of our short career.

We were tucked away in a little traveled corner of the park and had a very nice site under a big shade tree. Things only got better from there. This competition had a couple of extra categories, so we were kept pretty busy getting ready for them. Brian and Rob ground up homemade sausage and then Brian tested out his new creation (Smoked Pecan Pie).

At the awards ceremony, when we were called for 1st place in Chef's Choice that our pecan pie won, our new resident baker Brian made us proud. We also were called up for 4th place ribs. This was a new experience for us, as we had not done too well in that category before. To round out our awards, we received an honorable mention for brisket. The culmination of our scores gave us an 8th place finish overall out of 72 teams. To say that we were pleased would be a gross understatement. Couple that with getting to see our BBQ friends and meeting new ones, made this a memorable experience for us. We will definitely be back.

October 19-20 , 2008

Diamond State BBQ Championship

Dover, DE

Recap:

Well Dover was the last competition of the year for Pigheaded BBQ. We had a really good time at Dover this year. While Friday was a little iffy, the weather was much better than last year. In attendance were Ron, Ron Jr., Mike, Brian and Stephanie (one of our many groupies). Steph is actually Mike's little sister who he had to babysit for the weekend.

We thought and were told by others that our chicken and ribs were our best yet. I thought our pork was OK and our brisket was pretty good. It just goes to show you that the judges and we hardly ever agree.

Chicken - 23rd place, Ribs – 33rd place, Pork – 11th place, Brisket – 21st place

We were a little down as they called the results, as we thought we would at least get a call in something. When we received the official scores and standings, we were very pleasantly surprised to find out that while we didn't do any one thing great, we were consistent enough to finish 14 th out of 72 teams. This was a tough field of competitors and we are proud of our standings among them. On the other hand we did finish top team for Delaware.

While this was our second year competing, we feel that we learned and accomplished a lot:

We had our first 1st place finish in a category

Our highest finish in ribs and brisket,

Our highest overall finish

We won enough money to pay for one of the competitions. We also just found out that out of 4,333 teams registered at KCBS, we finished 481. Top 11%.

Thanks for all the hard work, dedication and camaraderie guys. We also want to thank our families for all their support and all of our friends who came out to support us in our little obsession.

May 9-10 , 2008

2nd Annual Galvinell's BBQ Competition

Conowingo, MD

Recap:

Well our second competition of the season has come and gone. This was a small competition with only 20 teams. It was sanctioned by the Mid Atlantic BBQ Association and held at Galvenells meat company in Conowingo, MD.

I would like to thank Jennifer and all the fine folks at Galvenells for putting on this fine competition. They were most gracious hosts. I would also like to thank Mark Friedrichs for organizing and repping the event.

Brian and myself were the only team members able to attend the competition and I must say that it was quite an experience. We treated it as an opportunity to experiment and did we ever.

All in all, it was a pretty good competition for us. We finished 6 th out of 20 teams overall. We turned in skinless chicken thighs for the first time and placed 13 th . We changed everything up on our ribs and placed 7 th . Our pulled pork was pretty good and we finished 3 rd for that and received a small trophy for our effort. Our brisket was in our opinion terrible and we placed 7 th . Go figure.

Once again we met some very nice people and saw some old friends. We cooked along side Piglickers again and they were very helpful in setting up and by bringing a generator. Thanks again guys.

I would like to give a special thanks to Brian for making the trip, even though there was a family medical issue. I can't even imagine being able to pull this off without his help and company. We have plenty of time to practice ‘till Stevensville in July. I will be cooking at the Relay for Life in Middletown, DE on June 6 th . If anyone is in the area, stop by and say hi.