Day 574 – Bones, Battle of

Barbecue is a loaded term with vastly differing meanings depending on where one is located and to whom one is speaking. I tend to agree with Meat Head over at Amazing Ribs on most of the myriad barbecue variables.

From my own research I’ve discovered i prefer water-smoked ribs vs. dry-smoked ribs, i prefer when the bottom membrane of the ribs is removed prior to smoking, i can’t stand “memphis style” ribs that are boiled prior to grilling, i like a sauce that caramelizes when the ribs are finished over the coals, and i really don’t like IPA style beer on hot day (or any other day for that matter).

Gotta love the chrome exhaust stack.

The Battle of the Bones brings local purveyors of barbecue together for a two-day competition that includes chili, pulled pork, ribs, brisket and chicken. Since we only went for today all we tried were the ribs.

There were, i believe, 8 teams competing, so it was easy to compare them all. The first thing to note was the absence of sauce. All the ribs save one, were very lightly sauced. So lightly as to be inconsequential to the taste. All of the ribs were cooked in dry smokers over mostly Lazzari oak/hardwood charcoal. There were two electric smokers represented. Only one outfit even attempted to finish their ribs over an open offset firebox. The pit bosses were kept extremely busy trying to stagger their cooking so as to not cook too much, but not run out of ready ribs, therefore it was impossible for me to ask questions or chat about techniques. I did see one Weber Smokey Mountain water smoker and asked why that wasn’t in use. The kid working for his dad, the boss, said “we only cook our competition ribs in that.” Interesting.

Overall there was little difference between all 8 teams. All had very nice smoke rings in the meat. One woman called it a smoke “glow.” None of the ribs were oversmoked (i’m no expert, but i tend to oversmoke, so i know when something isn’t oversmoked). One team’s ribs were terribly salty. One team’s sauce had a little heat, one team’s sauce was sweeter than the rest, but not caramelized at all. I suspect all the ribs were mass-market varieties with the obligatory “solution” injected. I think that was part of the competition… everybody had to work with the same ribs.

One team, “The All-American Barbecue Company” ran out of ready ribs. The pit boss came up front to apologize to the people waiting, but pointed out “i won’t serve ribs until their ready… and that means another,” he turned to his crew and shouted “temp?” “225 but she’s warming” was the reply, “40 minutes,” he concluded and went back to the smoker. When i came back after using up all the punches on my “beer ticket” to sample his ribs i wasn’t wowed, but wasn’t disappointed either.

Here are the obligatory hipstamatics.

[slidepress gallery=’battle-of-the-bones’]

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