Success at our first competition

Bob & Kent from Fired Up BBQ made the long journey up to Bangalow, on the NSW Far North Coast to compete in the Bangalow BBQ & Bluegrass Festival BBQ Competition. After a 10 hour drive, and a few hours setting up, it was time to get down to business.

Cooking commenced late afternoon, with all teams cooking through the night. Hand-in's for the categories started at 10am the next day, and were spaced apart at 1 hour intervals. This seems like it would be plenty of time, but let me tell you, it can get pretty hectic!

Kent, being the engineer that he is, made up a strict time schedule for the event. This kept things nicely on track, and even allowed the boys to get a couple of hours sleep each. A luxury at these kinds of events!

We have photos of our hand-ins, all except for the ribs as we were so pushed for time that we forgot to take one!

Here is our Chicken, Pork & Brisket hand-in boxes :

We were confident with the chicken, and thought we did ok with the ribs. Brisket we thought our burnt ends looked a little uneven, but left them in as they tasted SENSATIONAL. Pork was a little let down for us, as we had no experience at cooking pork for competition. It's quite different to doing pulled pork for rolls!

Anyway, our chicken did ok, but we didn't get a call-up (which means no placing or trophy). We thought that the chicken was our strongest hand-in, so fully expected that we wouldn't get any other call-ups.

Much to our surprise, our team name got called out in the ribs category for 4th place! It was fantastic to go up and collect our trophy in front of the huge crowd.

As expected, no call-up for pork, but then much to our shock and delight, we got called up again, this time for 3rd place in the Brisket category.

This was amazing, and vindication of all the hard work, hours, $$$ and practice that we had done. Here's a pic of our trophies :