With 5 hours sleep Sue and I met at the hotel lobby to get back onsite for 5:30 am. This would allow us to get our equipment back out of the tent and start the chicken and ribs for the 10:00 and 12:00 turn in times (respectively).

We got the ribs cleaned up and the rub on them and into the cookers, we were planning on 5 ribs per serving with a total of 6 servings. You would think that could be done with 4 racks of ribs, nope not on competition cuts. We made a fatal mistake on our first amature competition, we cut the ribs down the centre between the bones, certainly makes sense to me. However, an experienced judge will take a bite out of the centre on one side and then turn the rib over and take a bite out of each of the ends. If you cut too close on one of your ribs, the judge will not get sufficient meat to assess your rib. Remember, one judge one rib. Lopsided ribs have eliminated more competitors than overcooking. So we are sacrificing every second rib to ensure the Judges get a full bite of meat on every side. This means twice the amount of ribs required, 8 racks of back ribs in all.

Once that was on we turned our attention to whole chickens, we decided to do rotisserie chicken on the charcoal grill. I figured with a 10:00 turn in, if we had them rolling by 8:00 we would be ok. Tied, seasoned and placed on the skewer... but where was the rotisserie? CRAP it's nowhere on site. We had to get these things going, CRAP CRAP CRAP, so I turned them by hand while Sue looked for the box to no avail. Thank God for cell phones, I called Barb up at the hotel and made her run to the 24 hr Wal-mart to get us a new motor, oh the joy of competition cooking.

As you can see we presented a 1/2 chicken with cornbread and a pear poached in white port, stuffed with blue cheese & pecans. The ribs were matched up with the same pear with a grilled yellow pepper filled with grape tomatoes and bocconcini cheese drizzled with olive oil and a hint of cilantro. Both the chicken and ribs placed us centre of the pack at 13 th and 16th place respectively. I was a little disappointed but was reminded that this is only our first time out against the PROs, to get those places is a good job in its self. I have to consider there is room for improvement on both of these dishes, so I guess I'm ok there.

On to the "Anything Butt" category, I am only going to speak a bit on this because we are planning a separate topic, to provide you with all of the details, recipe and all. This is an open category, we can grill or smoke anything we want as long as it is not Pork Shoulder, Ribs, Chicken or Beef Brisket.

You have heard me talk about Dave’s beef, he also raises lamb. I have had this a few times out at Mac’s place and it is a pleasure to enjoy such a treat. Lamb should not be feared, you just have to consider a smaller creature and thus needs to be prepared a little differently. You are not going to get great big steaks but you will not find a better bite of flavour.

We grilled and presented our rack of Lamb with the yellow pepper and the fig goat cheese from earlier and we took FIRST place, an impressive 492 points out of 500. That was a whopping 21 points ahead of second place. We had three perfect scores here, that’s unheard of, but I have not heard too much as this is our first time out. 

I want to provide the teams special thanks Dave Dekay, our supplier of natural lamb. Without his hard work and love for his livestock, The Black Pig BBQ team would not been able to reach another first at the Canadian Open Championship. Dave is just outside of London and should you want to sample some of his products you can reach him at dmdekay@allstream.net tell him the Black Pig BBQ team sent you.

I should mention that Dave does not sponsor us, we are customers just like the any other, his beef and lamb are just that good.