Southern York County BBQ Cookoff Recap

We arrived at Shrewsbury in a driving rainstorm around 10:30AM, not knowing if we would sink or swim. We met with Ben , one of the organizers and found our spot. After parking the trailer we decided to duck into the Farmers Market to stratagize and stay dry for a spell. We had a look around, a bite to eat and decided to go brave the weather and set up. We had positioned the trailer to use as a wind block and set up our canopies, tables and other necessary paraphernalia. We saw that a small lake was developing in our site, so we borrowed a shovel from our local neighborhood Pirates, (Tom & Chrissy of the Va BBQ Pirates) and filled a few buckets of gravel to fill in the low spots. Ron Jr. then became our resident irrigation specialist and dug some channels to divert the water away from the site. Thank goodness we were situated on crush and run instead of grass, or this would have been a quagmire.

The rest of the day was spent doing our normal competition chores. The meat was inspected by Melvin of New Holland fame, the meat prep was started and the site fine tuned. We did some visiting of neighboring teams. We were between Smokeopolis and Susquehanna Blue Smoke. Both were great neighbors. We chatted with Sal of Smokin' Gnome, Jim & Mark of Pequea Pullers, Tom & Michele of Lo'N'Slo and met the Pulling Pork team who were the only other team from Delaware. Since it was still raining, we decided to walk across the parking lot back to the Farmers Market for dinner. What a friendly bunch of people. They greeted all the BBQ teams enthusiastically and had lots of questions about the whole competition scene. The food was great and we had fun looking around at all the shops. We headed back for the cooks meeting and more chores.

Did I mention that it rained there? It rained 'till around 1:00AM, then more or less settled into a light mist. We put our butts and brisket on and semi -retired for the evening. Up for good at 5:00AM to get ready to put the ribs on and start the long day ahead. The cook went well during the night and once the ribs were on, we prepped the sausage and got ready to put the chicken on. Our Amish friends from the Middletown Farmers Market came up to support us. They were there to see how a first time competition looked because we are trying to convince them to host one in Middletown. My wife and Dorothy, a family friend drove up also to cheer us on. We were pleased with the chicken taste, though not necessarily the appearance, thought the ribs and pork were good and the brisket tasty, but a little tough and the sausage good. After turning in our entries, we started cleaning up and waiting for the award ceremony.

We all walked over to the awards tent and heard some good music from a local band as the final scores were tallied by the Kansas City Barbecue Society reps. During a steady rain, the ceremony started and we were surprised by being called up for 2nd place chicken finish. We were called up again in the next category for a 3rd place ribs finish. We didn't hear our name for the pork category, but were called up again for an 8th place finish in brisket. Tom & Michele from Lo'N'Slo were Grand Champs with 2 firsts and 2 second and Paul & Barbara of PA Midnight Smokers were Reserve Champs. Guess who was 3rd overall? PIGHEADED BBQ. We were stunned and very pleasantly surprised.

Melvin from Meadow Creek, Joe from NBBQA, and Ben and Alicia from The Markets at Shrewsbury did a very good job with this first year event and despite the weather the a good time was had by all. We will definitely plan on being back next year.

Pics from the Southern York County BBQ Cookoff