PigheadedBBQ

2012 New Holland Recap

2012 New Holland was a fantastic experience for Pigheaded BBQ. Great weather, venue and organizers made this an almost perfect competition. Norma and Ron arrived very early (6AM) on Friday morning and started setting up. We had two great neighbors again with Hidden Fire on one side and a brand new team, Holy Smokers on the other. We couldn’t ask for better neighbors. Thankfully, in New Holland you get the same site year after year unless you ask for a change. Norma started prepping her Chef’s Choice entry as this entry required a very early prep. The rest of the team arrived a bit later and we all set about our prepping of the meats. This is a large spread out venue and during the day most of us had a chance to wander, visiting other teams and getting our yearly fix of Lapps Ice Cream as well as other food vendors. The cooks’ meeting was at 7PM and final prep work was done right after. The overnight cook went smoothly and a beautiful Saturday morning saw the final prep for chicken and ribs and sausage. Sausage was the first entry and Ron v2.0 worked his magic with the Pat LaFreida sausage used for this category. A huge thanks to our sponsor (Pat LaFreida Meats) for the fantastic sausage and Creekstone briskets. The usual KCBS order for Chicken, Ribs, Pork and Brisket was next and Chef’s Choice was out last category. All went as planned and we turned in all our entries on time. This is always somewhat of a juggling act, but we seem to have our timing down. All was in the judges hands now, nothing to do but clean up, pack and wait. Out whole entourage walked down for the awards ceremony with baited breaths hoping for a good outcome. We were very happy with the results because we walked in every category we entered, taking 6th place in Chef’s Choice, 2nd Sausage, 13th Chicken, 4thRibs, 12th Pork,12th Brisket and 4th Overall out for 72 teams. We had a very consistent cook which is all you can ask for and hope to keep this up in our BBQ marathon. We are cooking 3 weekends in a row with a possible 4th one if we qualify. Next up is Smokin’ on the Bay in Tracy’s Landing, MD on Labor Day weekend, then the Sam’s Club event in Laurel, MD the following week. Hope to see some of you there. As usual, thanks to all our friends and family for their support.