Happy New Year! We are back after a brief break for the holidays to review the trip this past weekend to Shawnee, Oklahoma for the Rib Cookoff Associations World Championships.
I found out I made the draw in a movie theater on December 3, 2024 (along with everyone else who went) and proceeded to miss most of the movie due to excitement and making phone calls. Definitely worth it in my opinion. I paid for my registration the same day because I knew I wasn’t going to miss it. I wanted to cook in all 4 categories which were Pork Steaks, Chicken Wings, Baby Back Ribs, and Spare Ribs, and then I proceeded to not practice at all because it is such a busy time of the year for work, and our personal life as well. Thankfully I cook wings pretty regularly and spare ribs are my normal competition choice, so I was pretty confident in those categories, not that it’s an excuse.
Normally, as I’ve mentioned before, our Lovely Jubbly BBQ Team consists of myself, my wife and daughter, along with my Dad and his girlfriend. Due to the time frame and location, my dad and his girlfriend were unable to come along, and because of some things at home, my wife and daughter stayed home, so this left me to make the trip and cook the World Championships on my own. I certainly like having the entire team at these competitions because it is nice to be able to delegate and have a fun time with family, but I did discover that I don’t hate running the show calmly by myself either.
I arrived at the Firelake Arena late Friday afternoon and got my cook site all set up and ready to cook pork steaks. I used my trusty Weber kettle and broke out my Grill Grate ceramic grill attachment to get a great sear on each side of the pork steak. I set up the grill for 2 zone cooking, so the charcoal was on one side of the grill, this way I could get it up to temp without burning the outside of the steak. Once I got a good sear, I placed the steak in foil wrapped it with some Blues Hog Champions Blend BBQ Sauce, and let it come up to just shy of 200 degrees internal temperature. At this point, I let it rest for about 10-15 minutes and then gave each side of the steak a brush of BBQ sauce and put it back on the grill for 5 minutes just to set the sauce. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the finished product, but it was dark and hard to get a good picture, but I can assure you that it was gorgeous.
The next morning I got back to the cook site and after everything was set back up, I got the chicken wings prepped and started brining them in a bag with chicken broth and a few tablespoons of my The Everything all-purpose BBQ Rub and let them brine for about 1.5-2 hours. After the cook’s meeting, I got back to the trailer and started prepping the Baby Back Ribs. This was going to be my first time cooking Baby Backs in over 3 years but I got the best ones I could find, Prairie Fresh Primes. I trimmed them, pulled the membranes off the back, and started the seasoning process. I wanted to give each side 15 minutes or so before flipping and treating the other sides, so in total, adding both layers of rub to both sides took about an hour. The Baby Backs went on about 10 am and smoked for an hour. I brought my Masterbuilt 1050 Charcoal Vertical Smoker for this competition because I wanted to get the best results I could, and none of my smokers cook ribs like the Masterbuilt does.
Before I put the Baby Backs on, I started prepping the Spare Ribs the same way that I did the Baby Backs and removed the wings from the brine so I could get them drying off to help the skin get crispy. I treated both sets of ribs exactly the same and the wings only received a coating of my And Then Some BBQ rub because I didn’t want to overseason them being a smaller piece of meat.
At 11am both the wings and the Spare Ribs went on the smoker and I basted the Baby Backs. I am not going to go into too much detail on the cook of the ribs because I followed my Ribs recipe from a previous post, and I’ll share the link here on how I cook my ribs. Ribs! Ribs! Ribs! The wings were on for about 45 minutes when they got to about 190 degrees internal. Some of them burnt on the bottom, but the ones that didn’t, I put in an aluminum tray and tossed them in the same Blues Hog Champions Blend I mentioned before, and put them back on to get the sauce set for only about 5 minutes.
Wings turn-in was between 12-1230 and I got mine in well within the time frame, and that includes after wrapping the Baby Backs first. Baby Backs turn-in was between 2-230 and one thing I noticed about competition Baby Backs is that the arch in the bones makes it very hard to stand up nicely, but that being said, they looked great and tasted even better.
I will share all of the turn-in boxes in order at the end.
The Spare Ribs came off right before Baby Back’s turn-in and rested for an hour. Spare Ribs were turned in from 3-330 and also were very good. Because of nasty weather coming in across the plains, I ended up cleaning up after the Spare Ribs turn-in and left right away to try and beat the weather, which I thankfully did. Congratulations to all of the winners and all of the other competitors who made it and had successful cooks as well!
Competition notes:
- Unfortunately, both sets of ribs were a little more overcooked than I planned, despite being very juicy and tender anyway, for the competition was still more overdone than I wanted. It’s an easy fix that I have already figured out what to do.
- I want to give a big shout-out to Mitch with Red Line BBQ who was kind enough to help me by giving me 2 racks of spare ribs to cook after I had a very hard time finding some.
- I want to give another big shout-out to Tommy Woo and Bo Wilson on the site next to me for loaning me an insulated warming cabinet for resting my meats and also inspiring me to buy one as well.
- It was a huge honor to be invited to the World Championships and I hope to capitalize on this and pursue competitions much more regularly.
My Results:
- 22nd of 69 in Pork Steaks
- 48th of 68 in Chicken Wings
- 95th of 111 in Baby Back Ribs
- 105th of 111 in Spare ribs.
Like I said, if my ribs hadn’t been slightly overcooked, I feel I would have done much better in those categories, but as mentioned, it was a World Championship, so being 95th and 105th in the invited World is good enough for me! I was very excited about the 22nd in Pork Steaks and I had the 5th-highest tenderness score among the 69 entries, so I’m also very pleased with that as well!
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As always, keep cookin’ and Lovely Jubbly!
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