North Kansas City BBQ
The Kansas City barbecue season opened March 12 with the Snake Saturday 
parade and festival, which includes the North Kansas City/Mo State Championship Barbecue contest. The weather is always iffy in North Kansas City in March. Some years, spring has sprung in full glory and you can acquire the first sunburn of the year, while other years see rain, cold temperatures and even snow. Well, this was one of the cold years. Off and on rain, temperatures in the 30's and low 40's and just enough wind to put the rain in your face. When passers-by from the public stop to warm their hands over the fire box on your smoker, you know it's cold! In spite of the weather, the contest grew almost 40% this year. Typically, around 60 teams compete but this year there were 109.
SMT shook things up for this season of competition. We have a new smoker to master; this contest was only the second time it has been cooked on. Also, Aaron and Gary traded specialties - Aaron took over on ribs and Gary will handle pork. Tammye is trying out some new techniques with her chicken and Rod re-invented his brisket. Nun and Tracy have joined the team as runners, taking the pressure of this important responsibility of having hot and timely turn-ins off of the cooks.
Because of the St. Patrick's Irish theme of the event, North Kansas City offers a non-sanctioned contest for corned beef. In past years, Smoke Me Tender has tried sandwiches and other "different" presentations of the smoked corned beef to stand out from the crowd, but without much success. So this year they played it straight up and smoked the meat to tender, juicy perfection and simply turned in slices, a la brisket style. This "back to basics" approach paid off with a second place award!
The awards ceremony was packed with the addition of all the extra teams this year. Everyone anxiously waited to hear if their name would be called. SMT was called up and awarded for corned beef, but missed the top 10 in the sanctioned categories. The best sanctioned placing was pork at 25th. (There will be no living with Gary now!) Chicken was 43rd, brisket 50th and ribs 95th. Overall, SMT was 57th out of the 109 teams. Considering all the changes made this year and the challenges presented by the weather, SMT members walked away somewhat disappointed but still feeling good about the rest of the season to come.
Overall:
Chicken:
Ribs:
Pork:
Brisket:
Corned Beef:
Dessert:
The next competition for SMT will be Rock n Ribs festival in Springfield, April 15-16. This event is also a fundraiser for children's charities in the region and has contributed over half a million dollars in its 10 year history to this worthy cause. See you there!