Back to the basics

We just wrapped up a much needed week off from the BBQ trail. The highlight of our week “off” was a 3-way pork test where we went back to basics for inspiration.

Pork has been our nemesis all year, and despite working on it constantly, we just haven’t been able to turn things around in the judges’ tent. Oh what I would give for my first pork call! But like the song goes, “you can’t always get what you want.” And true to the song, I guess I did get what I needed - some pork help from our BBQ family.

Yep, these are the folks that we go up against each weekend, and they’re also the same people who would lend you a hand and give you the shirt off their back. Their advice was much appreciated and it gave us the inspiration to do yet another test cook, this time with simplification in mind.

We tested our go-to pork recipe (T1) against an early 2017 recipe (T3) that earned us our only pork award of the year … and a new recipe (T2) created just this week. While we were at it, we tried our hand at some new trimming methods that seem promising and way more efficient.

Truth be told, I’m feeling some pressure to get some pork points on the board as we head into our first appearance at the Qualifiers for the Sam’s Club National BBQ Tour. The top 6 teams advance to Regionals so we really need pork to be working for us vs. crushing our dreams.

We thought T2 was the clear winner on appearance, taste and tenderness. By a lot. The funny thing is all aspects of the recipe - trimming, injection, rubbing, wrapping, carving, saucing and boxing -- are super simple.

So it was decided, we’ll put it to the test at Sam’s Club this weekend!

Now we just gotta nail our entire cook, starting now.

Freak ON!