Last weekened, my wife and I had the opportunity to judge a backyard barbecue competition put on by Jim Dandy’s BBQ in Sharonville, Ohio. Last year, we took fourth place overall in the KCBS competition held at the same site, but the competition was modified to backyard level cooking this year.

The competition was held at the Ford plant in Sharonville, and the plant put on a car show, a cornhole tournament and other activities. There were also a few food vendors there. It was a perfect weekend for an event like this, with sunny skies and highs in the 70s. Just gorgeous!

We wandered around the car show for a bit, talked to some of the teams (without looking too much at anything or letting them know we were judges), and then ended up getting ready to judge chicken and rib categories.

The car show as kind of fun, with one of my favorite old cars, the AC Cobra, as well as some old Ford trucks and several other great looking cars and motorcycles.

There were twelve teams in the competition and six judges, so we did 2 sets of 6 chicken entries, then 2 sets of 6 rib entries. Since it wasn’t a sanctioned competition, the organizer let me take a few photos.

There was an interesting mix of entries from the teams. Some had obviously taken the time to look into what to do for entries. The rules were similar to KCBS rules, but the teams could use any garnish. The problems with the appearance of some of the entries was that they didn’t even really think about it. Some looked really bad, some looked good enough to see in a sanctioned competition.

The biggest thing I noticed on the actual barbecue was that the teams weren’t used to competition. That’s not a ding at all, just an observation. In competition, you learn to pack the flavor you want into one bite, as the judges may only take one bite. The flavors were mostly bland. Some teams got very sweet flavors, but generally lacked balance with other flavors.

With the ribs, I thought I’d see overcooked ribs more than anything, and I found just the opposite. Ribs tended to be too tough instead of falling off the bone. some of the ribs were pretty good, though. The chicken entries varied a bit, with one Alabama sauce that surprised me (and was perfectly cooked). One chicken entry, though, had obviously been cooked over lighter fluid, and was just horrible. Overall, though, the entries were decent, and some would have done just fine in a sanctioned competition, I think.

It was nice to be able to get a few shots of the process, though I made sure to concentrate on the judging to be fair to the teams.