Back in August I participated in a BBQ Cookoff for my company’s diversity day for men (What’s more diverse than playing to male stereotypes? We had BBQ and Beer, the only thing we were missing were strippers). I was asked if I wanted to do the cook off and quickly said “eh, maybe”. That maybe really meant no I don’t want to do it but I rather not sound like all the other douches and say no. So I choose to be the douche that said maybe.

What sound does a douchey toilet make…doooouuuucccchhheeee!

Next thing I know I’m on the email chain for brainstorming for our team’s menu.

We had 7-8 people on our initial team, with 3 of them being so-called “BBQ Bad Asses”. Having these three people on the same team was like, damn cliches, having too many cooks in the kitchen. We gotten nothing accomplished in our first meeting because 1 person was set on making ribs, the other “made a great tasting brisket”, and the third BA had a scientific formula for making the best brisket. The rest of us on the team, me included, were in the mindset of helping out when needed and chilling out.

The whiny bitch of the bad asses (I can call them whiny bitches because I actually like these guys) started coming out. One was like “I’m making my brisket!” and the other “I don’t know how I fit in with this team, I want to feel like I can contribute something”. Uh oh…someone better call the Wahhhhhhhh-bulance!

The organizer for our organization made the chose to split the team into two, each having 3 cooks. Even though I fought it at first, in the long run it turned out awesome. Each time would be responsible for submitting a brisket, ribs, sauce, and a wildcard item. For our team I volunteered for the sauce and wildcard since no else seemed to want them. For the wildcard, I would make my Cochinita Pibil and the sauce I would ask my Mom for advice.

Besides hanging around cooking up cows there was another plus about the cookoff. It took place on Thursday from 5am-4:30pm…meaning I didn’t have to work just smell the sweet smell of burning cow and pig flesh. I love the smell of burning cow flesh in the morning!

I have made the cochinita pibil enough times to not really think twice about what I was going to do about it. The only thing different in this case was cooking it on a grill and not in the oven. We just had to maintain the temperature and it was all good, son. For the sauce, I was a little lost not having ever made anything before. I turned to the internet for some research and asked my mom, the bad ass chef, for recommendations. She emailed me a tomato based sauce that looked pretty good. We picked up the ingredients and cooked it up pretty quick…30 minutes or so. The end result was pretty good but it was way too smoky tasting, a result of the liquid smoke the recipe called for. When you’re in a Texas BBQ cook off, which entails smoking your meat, there isn’t really a need for your sauce to have a smoky flavor. So I decided to make the sauce again with just a drop of the liquid smoke. This time it came out tasting of heaven, if heaven was a place covered with sweet tomato based bbq sauce. This time around I also decided to try my hand at a Apple Cider vinegar based sauce. The best way to describe the taste of this one is like being stuck in hell and having to toss Rush Limbaugh’s salad after he was done eating a Mexican dinner.

Even though I wasn’t a fan of the second sauce I decided to take them both to the team and let them decide. They were both in agreement for the tomato based one.

I didn’t have any expectations going in to the cook off. I was just looking to learn a thing or two about bbq’ing and hang out with some good peeps. But something bad ass happened…I won second place with the BBQ sauce. My first time ever in a cook off and I pick up second place…second out of 11. Boo Yah! Rob Prudhomme up in this mutha! Sir Robbie Rob kicked it up a notch…Bam!!! Anyone want my autograph?

The pibil also got a ton a compliments and people were really interested in the process of preparing it. Hearing everything people were saying about it I thought it might place something in the wild card portion but it didn’t happen. Our team also took 2nd place with our ribs. The team made up of a guy with a scientific formula for brisket and two guys that wanted to hang out, took home two trophies. Pimp!

I kind of want to study up on smoking meats…wait I mean cooking cows through smoking. Not sucking on man meat. Even though this was just a small taste of cooking competition I would like to try a full out one. It could be some serious fun.

Tags: bbq cookoff, bbq sauce, bbqing, cochinita pibil, ribs, smoking meat