Rib Cook...

Always a stumbling stone somewhere...









I had talked about using the Nature-Glo lump charcoal and liking it a lot. Burns clean, very little ash, pure wood. I got it at Gordon Food Service here in Nashville.

Now...they don't carry it anymore. They stock their own brand of lump. I've used their charcoal before so I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a shot.

Never again...

It's true when they say you get what you pay for.

The Nature-Glo lump was $12 a bag, the GFS (Gordon Food Service) lump was $9 a bag.

Nature-Glo is good solid wood lump, no scrap wood. The GFS lump was trash wood kind of like Cowboy Lump when it started out. Cowboy has improved their quality some, but not enough.

GFS had a burnt smell to it too, I could tell it was scrap wood and not of very good quality scrap wood at that. So that brand will definitely not grace my firebox.

Luckily, I still had some Nature-Glo left to cook with...

The only other lump that is available around here is the Big Green Egg brand made by Royal Oak. A friend of mine cooks with it and he really likes it. It's about $15 a bag so I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Green Egg is a pretty big brand name. If I don't like it...I'll just have to order Nature-Glo on line and be done with it...

(I am not a sponsor nor a salesman for Nature-Glo. If I was, I would have a garage full of it and wouldn't be complaining about not being able to find it.)

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

Big Daddy

Fire in the hole...

I fired up the pit and I was pleased by how she acted.

The only thing I didn't like was... I'm exposed to Mother Nature's misfortune and temperament and she showed me her butt by raining on my parade.

That... put me behind by at least 2 hours on cooking. That will not cut it in a competition.

The pit will be good for bulk cooks in decent weather, but if it rains...I'm screwed.




Some major work will have to be done to the trailer to cover this cooker up, or I might have to go a different route altogether for competition.

Everything turned out great...but by competition standards, I would not have made the turn in times...

And that...is not good.

Cooking is like therapy, it keeps me from doing dishes...
Big Daddy

Pass the Q please...

Ribs, are probably the most misunderstood meat when it comes to cooking competition. You could have cooked ribs for years and be fall off the bone consistent every time.

But that will not cut it in KCBS. KCBS teaches their judges that ribs are to pull clean off the bone at the point of where you bit into it. Not, fall off the bone, which many home cooks have done for years and years.



By doing this, you have to reinvent yourself in the art of cooking ribs. It's hard to do but you'll get the hang of it with plenty of practice. I have already done a few test runs and people tell me, they like the fall off the bone better.

So as a cook, you want to go back into old habits that work and make people happy. This is the dividing line between home cooks and competition cooks.

Competition cooks are home cooks that have advanced on to the next level of cooking. They have figured out what the judges are looking for, what will work and what won't work. Timing is everything in competition.

Home cooks can make mistakes and get away with it. Competition cooks can't. No mistakes can be made. Competition cooking is like bowling. Once you've turned that box in you have released the ball. If it strikes, that's good, it counts for you. But if you gutter it, it still counts, only against you and you don't get that second roll to try and spare that frame up.

Cooking is like any other sport. You compete against other people yes, but just like bowling, you compete against yourself. No one can beat you, except you. No one beats me in bowling, I beat myself. They may have had a better game than I did but they didn't beat me, I beat myself. I didn't adapt my game to the lane conditions so I beat myself.

Cooking is the same way. If I don't adapt to competition standard (lane condition) and my turn in box (ball) hits the gutter every time I'm going to beat myself hands down

To shoot a perfect score (300) in bowling, everything and I mean everything has to fall into place. I've only done it once and came close to it (299) twice more. That would have been a Grand Championship and two Overall Championships.

When we start doing test cooks this spring, smoke will fill the air with that sweet aroma of barbecue. We will be taking notes, drinking a few cold beverages and we will be enjoying life.

Look out world, here we come.


Cooking is like therapy, it keeps me from doing dishes...
Big Daddy


Big Daddy was a fire tender for Peg Leg Porkers. B.D. is now pit master and founder of Hillbilly Rib Runners Competition Bar-B-Que Team based out of Hendersonville, Tennessee