Backyard At The Rocke III- Praticing My Ribs

Next weekend Four Q BBQ will be joining 14 other teams in a little get together where we all prepare three meats (chicken, tri tip and ribs) and an "anything but" category, get judged by official CBBQA judges, taste each others food, and just have a good time as one big BBQ family.

Sorry for the tease, but this one is not open to non-competitors. However, we have a number of open competitons coming up for 2008 which I will definitely keep you all informed of.

Anyway, you all know I am the pork butt queen. However, for this event, we switched things around and I will be doing the spare ribs. This is our opportunity to have constructive feedback and judging of varying prep techniques and seasonings.

Ribs with about another hour to go.


Ready to eat.



I am also going to prepare the "anything but" category. What is "anything but"? Well, just simply not ribs, not chicken and not tri tip. Could be meat, could be a dessert. To keep the other teams from stealing my idea, I can't post my practice run on this category yet, but I will say it is a "throw back" to a dessert popular in the 80's and experienciung a surge in popularity over the last year and no- it is not Fondu.

Kick the Tires and Light the Fires

Another successful backyard BBQ event was hosted by CRocke this past weekend. This event gave us Southern California BBQ teams a chance to receive feedback from some official KCBS judges and new teams a chance to get a taste of competition. Two of us from Four Q competed and what an experience.



Big Mista prepared the ribs

and chicken while I did the


tri tip

and "anything but" (Korean Short Ribs).


BigMista also prepared pig candy using apple cured bacon with brown sugar and cayenne smoked in the UDS (Ugly Drum Smoker).

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my attempts to perfect lemon squares/tarts for the anything but category. Well after looking at my practice results and considering who were the judges, I decidwd to drop the lemon stuff and go with Korean BBQ short ribs. Those who were there know I really didn't make a choice until the last mninute. I went from lemon sqaures/tarts to rose water creme brulee to lemon sour cream pound cake with marshmallows and lemon curd to the final choice of Korean short ribs. Yes I even had homemade marshmellows in the shape of pigs which I was going to plate with the lemon sour cream pound cake. I forgot to take pictures of the piglts but take my word, they were cute and tasty.

A number of folks took photos of the event. I have listed the links below:

Survival Gourmet
Sylvie's Flickr Photos
Leanza's photobucket

Results: Well, we got 2nd place in Tri Tip. I as well as most of the participants who tasted the chicken agreed that the chicken was also first class. We went out on a limb with presentation which seems to have not been a good thing with the judges.

For complete results see the CBBQA wiki site. Hope you all (non-members)can open this link.

Tri Tip Prices

(photo courtesy of Ralph's weekly ad)
This weekend, a local Southern California grocery chain, Ralph's, had beef Tri Tip on sale at $1.99 per pound untrimmed (regular price was $4.99/lb). Though untrimmed, there wasn't much fat. This is a great price and all you need is a Value Plus card which is available at all stores.

I was at Costco earlier Sunday morning where trimmed Tri Tip was about $6.94/lb and Smart and Final had untrimmed for about $5.99/lb (gobs of fat on their untrimmed).

Why this great interest in Tri Tip? In a couple of weeks, I'm going to join one of my BBQ team mates (Big Mista) for some BBQ backyard fun. A number of local Southern California BBQ teams will be meeting up to do what is basically a competition practice- "Kick the Tires and Light the Fires". No pressure, just pure fun. We are matching BBQ cooking technicques on Tri tip, chicken, BBQ ribs and "anything but" chicken/ribs/tri tip. In that Tri Tip is not my specialty, I will be cooking a couple a roasts prior to the event to develop my skills.

$1.99/lb Tri Tip is perfect to practice with and also good eats. I did do one roast yesterday (sorry, forgot about pictures) which though tasty and tender still needs to be tweaked so the flavor will "pop" (to quote Big Mista).

I also will be doing the "anything but" category which could be a dessert or meat except for ribs, chicken and Tri Tip. All the food just needs to be prepared on site the day of the event. I haven't formalized what I will prepare for this category yet.