03/01/24 - The Pork Shanks - Brian Corbett

Music.

My name is Luke Darnell, pit master of Old Virginia Smoked Barbecue, and I'm here to tell you about my new online class available at BBQChamps.com. This is a 100% tell-all competition barbecue class from yours truly available online. It is a master class with 34 high-definition tell-all online competition barbecue videos that can be watched anytime and they do not expire. They are packed full of pro tips, techniques, and recipes that will show you how to take your barbecue to the next level.

These 34 barbecue cooking videos total seven hours and will show you everything that you need to take your competition cooking to a level that you never thought was possible. We've already heard from several teams that have bought our classes and have already seen success and gotten their first calls. So this is something that brings me a lot of joy in sharing my knowledge and seeing people be successful with it. So are you ready to take your competition in backyard cooking to the next level?

What are you waiting for? Just go ahead and go to BBQChamps.com and find Luke Darnell Old Virginia Smoke. We hope you learn a lot and enjoy these videos and have as much fun cooking these recipes as we had making them.

This podcast is brought to you by BBQData.com. BBQData.com is your one-stop shop for all of your barbecue competition data, historical data, calls, wins, placements, everything under one roof. It's a great way not only to track yourself in the standings, but also to track how you improve your scores from year to year. Listeners of this podcast can receive 20% off of a new subscription to BBQData.com with the code PITPOD. That's one word, all capital letters, P-I-T-P-O-D, PITPOD.

So check your team scores, check on others, and do it all on BBQData.com.

Hello welcome to another episode of pit master and old virginia smoke podcast my name is luke darnell host of the podcast and pit master of old virginia smoke and i'm here with my abc and one two three brian corbett from smoke and scullies how you doing bud you're good luke how about you i'm good i'm good we i just completed what i like to call my spring training for barbecue queue oh and you were a big part of that this was the third weekend that i cooked in a row and,

we went down to mission farms in iron station north carolina which if it sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere it is i mean we're not that far from charlotte so i have a beautiful venue have to give it up to lee and his family that put on the event they did a great job it was, didn't start out the best for me but we made it work and got it there so lots of fun lots of fun it was a ton of fun to be honest and uh and you're right an absolutely beautiful venue.

It's where lee and jenny shank it's actually their home and lee's club for his business but it's also a wedding venue that i think his wife jenny kind of runs i mean just a gorgeous Gorgeous, gorgeous venue they built to host weddings, and I'm sure they do other kind of corporate parties overlooking this beautiful pasture area with a pond, and it's good. It's nice. It's a really beautiful venue. Yeah, and got to cook on my old Jambo, which I sold roughly four months ago.

George DeMarz and Brian Turner made sure it was there and got to give old girl a spin. And we were in, so Brian and I were in an interesting setup situation that we were underneath this, basically leaned to against this building with a bunch of farm equipment and then spaces for both of us to cook. So we were cooking side by side, Jambo, Jambo and Outlaw sitting pretty much parallel to each other and had a absolutely fantastic time cooking.

Had a wonderful time. That's the second year in a row I've been able to cook in that same, under that lean to shelter thing.

Thing and it's it's quite nice especially this time of the year when the wind blows in february it might come up a little rain shower and you don't have to worry about popping up a tent or blowing away or anything it's nice you just unhook the cooker take your coolant tables out done so it was good it's all it's always fun time cooking beside old virginia smoke that's for sure.

And you've actually become quite the master of cooking in a very pop-up very i'm gonna go with minimalist setup and i have tried to take a lot of lessons and cues from what you do and you've got it down to an art i still bring a ton of stuff compared to what you bring but i think if i get this cool toolbox that you have that might consolidate a lot of that yeah you know know the craftsman toolbox that i call it comp in a box if i can't fit it in that box and

in my i got a bus fan that i carry like my injector bottles and my trays and whatever if i can't fit it in that craftsman box and that that bus pan it does not need to come into a cook-off to me and honestly that craftsman box is is actually too big for what i need but it wasn't always that You know, my son plays travel soccer. You and I have talked about that quite a bit.

And so I don't have the luxury that I had years ago of typically showing up on Thursday and leaving Sunday morning and making a three night ordeal out of it where I could really bring because I had a fifth wheel camper or whatever and just have all my stuff in there and more stuff than I needed.

Well, when I had to kind of speed how I cook up as far as arriving on Friday and leaving out a lot of times on Saturdays, when you try to load up all the stuff that was in the camper into a truck, it becomes exceedingly difficult. That's funny because Brian Turner calls me a minimalist studio when it comes to cooking. And honestly, it's helped me become more consistent in my cooking because I quite literally bring what I need.

And I am terrible if somebody gives me a shaker or a rub that I've never seen or tried at a contest. It's I think it's actually impossible. I don't have the willpower to not try it at that contest. And so I literally bring what I use. And if people come, people come over there and they go, hey, man, do you have any of this? Do you have any of that? And I go, not here.

I might at home, but not here. That's funny because it's the same way with I mean, even when we have the trailer, that's the same for us. We do not carry anything extra, which I've always wondered why we didn't, just because in case something were to go wrong, which happened to us two weeks ago in Haines City, where I'm Davenport, Florida.

I had driven all the way down there and I had two containers of our chicken sauce and opened the one up that I had brought to Davenport and water had gotten into it in the cooler. Oh, wow. And so I was there stuck trying to make a sauce out of nothing with stuff that I had or could borrow. And obviously that didn't sit well with Little General or the judges.

So that was a lesson learned in terms of when you're traveling that far for a contest, make sure you're taking care of the things that you cannot readily replace. Well, if you're going to mix the sauces like that and put them in a cooler and travel, just an idea. You can always take that little container and put it in a vacuum seal bag and just seal the bag up. You know, water is not going to get in that. If the jar leaks, it's all going to be contained in the sealed up bag anyway.

But, yeah, I can see where that would be a problem. And, you know, using as few products as I use, you watched it all weekend. I don't use very many products. It's easy for me to run a checklist before a contest that goes this, this, this, this. This and i'll you know i reach number nine or ten and that's she's got her wrapped up so.

Case in point this weekend what i was talking about i had some new products on my table that i had not even opened before and on the fly i was like i'm gonna use these old ribs and you were like just like that oh yeah we're gonna run it now did not score very well, Made a fantastic eating rib, but I don't know that I would run that profile again, at least in the manner with which I tried this weekend.

It tasted wonderful. Both. Fantastic. As I told you at the time, I said, that's a Fred McGriff rib. That's either going to hit a home run or strike out. That's exactly right.

But that's, you know, when I was thinking about this podcast, There were several cool things that happened. Well, cool and telling things that happened when we were cooking next to each other this weekend. Because we were very open about what we were doing. You and I don't have any secrets really anyway. And, you know, we're cooking and we're doing our thing. And, you know, I tried something a little bit different with my fire. You were just kicking the rust off and doing a damn good job of it.

First contest out of the gate. and it was just fun going back and forth and trading our food and seeing how how different things were how similar they were especially since we did this pretty close to the same time last year and and then and then we got to the third category we got to the pork category so So just to give a rundown of how it went, like I actually finally cooked a good piece of chicken this year and I was very excited to give it to Brian and Brian confirmed that it was good.

I had Brian's chicken. It's completely different than mine. And I was like, hmm, this will be pretty telling whenever we get to awards. And I got fourth place chicken and I'm sitting there going, cool.

And then Brian wins chicken. chicken so i'm like okay that's that's interesting because of how different they were we've already discussed ryan's rib it was a little bit different it was i'd eat it all day i'd eat a rack and a half of those my rib was i it was good not great finished 13th kind of got what i deserved but then Then we get to the third category, and pork has always been my nemesis.

Actually, the last time I think the two of us were on this podcast together, we talked about, How taking your weak meat and making it your best meat. We did. That was in November. We were talking about kind of assessing your year, how you improve going into the next year. So, yeah, we discussed strengthening your weakest category. I think it's fair to say, based on this weekend's results, neither one of us did that, at least at this time.

No. And I actually have three weeks of data to confirm that not only, have i taken my worst meat and not improved it but i've actually gotten worse at it and i i was calling it the pork yips that i got the yips in pork but i think more appropriately as i have the pork shanks, i like that the pork shanks yeah and yeah so i was trying some different things that you know i had gleaned from some sources and watched other people do and just wanted to try them out and man it is gone awry and we

have spent a lot of time talking about this over the past 72 hours actually and it's it's been telling to see you know i was doing things out of my comfort zone and doing things that i normally don't do and you even recognize that during the cook you were watching me with pork on the board and i'll let you tell it.

Well i'll never go into great detail but where we started i think we started working on our almost the exact same minute after rift turned in and i kind of got my stuff going got my stuff over here you know vacuumize you and you know getting ready to get my box ready and i look over and i see luke and he's got these beautiful money muscle slices on his board he's just sitting there with a whole bowl of paint brushes and he's just brushing away brushing away brushing away and i

get my the parts i'm trying to figure out i'm gonna make sure i put in the box on my board do my sauce and rubs and different stuff and i've organized and i go okay here and i build my box and I look over at Luke and he's still just brushing away brushing away, brushing away.

I had fortunately Lynn Brown was there to run my boxes this weekend so I showed the box, cleaned it up handed it to her, she goes and here's Luke just brushing away and brushing away and I thought man he's either really on to something or it's so bad he's trying to brush it until it just completely goes away. I don't know what's going on here and And then he builds his box and he had a guy there running his boxes as well and hands me a piece and I hand him a piece of my board and.

You know, and that's, I'm going to stop there, but that's one was good. And one was not, I think I would, I would, I would make that statement. Yes. One was good. One was not. And, and, and, and folks, this is my favorite part of this whole story. So I take the brisket out, slice it. I just look over at Brian and just stare at him like, uh-huh. Like these are, this is good. You know? And Brian looks at me, he goes, do not screw that up.

And little did i know that he was referring back to what he just witnessed in pork and witnessed somebody who was number one not confident in what they were doing and number two, not committed to what they were doing and number three just way over thinking something the tenderness on your pork was really good if there was something there was something with the taste and you and I talked about it. I just, I didn't care for it. I think it got judged accordingly. Yeah.

You know, and that's not knocking anything. We all need this conversation, right? But I knew when I saw you slice that brisket, and I've seen you slice brisket before and we've all, you and I have cooked a ton of briskets. And so, you know, when you've got one, you know, you know, when you've got one that, and when you slice that brisket and you picked up the first slice without slicing the second one, And I was like, oh man, he, that's a, that's a plus there.

And then I was sitting here going, man, I don't really want to screw him up, but I don't want him to screw that up. Like you just did that board. You know, that's why I was like, don't screw that up. Just get that in the box. Don't screw that up.

Oh man. Yeah. So didn't screw it up. It finished seventh which i was probably a little bit too demonstrative at awards and shook my head kind of like i thought i deserved better than that but hey good score in that crowd seventh i mean that was a strong field a small field a strong field and yes it finished seventh personally i think that was a top five brisket all day i could see that brisket winning it was that good but But that's also the difference in the four tables.

You put it on a different table, and I don't know if you won the table or not. I'm assuming you did. But I think you actually get a better score at a different table at the same time. It's just how that goes. But you also could have got a lower score. So anytime you finish in the top ten or especially top five, you count the blessings. I mean, we've all turned down what we thought was first place meet,

and you finish fourth. and it's hard not to be disappointed once you have 100 cooks under your belt you know what you're supposed to be doing but at the same time you did all you could to. Put it in the hands of others. Right. Right. And, you know, we had a great time. We both had pretty, pretty good results. Brian was fifth overall, I believe, or fourth or Brian was fourth overall. I was ninth overall, which might very well be my highest showing ever in Western North Carolina.

Never have traditionally done well in that part of the country.

And I'll take it, you know, after, after a couple, a couple of rough weeks in Florida, with different things going wrong different days and trying some different stuff out just to see where we are it works but and you know but we both have lots of things to move forward with in terms of you know successes and things that we need to work on so i go back to my pork shanks my my yips and had a lot of time on the way home to think about this.

I drove home, started leaving right after awards and got a little stomach problem on the way home. So I had to pull over and spend the night. So I had all day or all afternoon, Saturday, all night, Saturday night into Sunday and then Sunday morning driving, thinking about pork and thinking about why this This is such a problem. And, you know, talk to you extensively about it. Talk to Kim extensively about it. And the messages are pretty clear.

You know, number one, it's not like I've been terrible at it forever. So find something that you used to do that works. And it wasn't that long ago that it worked. A lot of people would say, why don't you take your own class on Barbecue Champs Academy? Might be something true. Maybe there's something to that. And I want to touch on some advice that you gave me, which was, do something that you're going to be confident in and do it and have the confidence.

Right. And that's, that's something I've been thinking a lot about. And that's, that's the same thought process I've had this week on, on ribs because it wasn't that long ago. I was a good rib cook. I scored well, and I've gone to rise somewhere. And when I said that to you, it was almost as if I was talking to the man in the mirror. I think we were, We were both driving and I was talking through a process with, I think, my pork.

And I was like, I don't know why I don't do this or this or this or that and ribs and this and trying this. And then you were talking about pork and I made that statement. You need to come up with something that's yours, that you got confident in, that you can run like riding a bicycle and be confident, turn it in and go. And it was like I was talking to the man in the mirror, you know, with me about ribs.

And in our two weakest categories this weekend and it's happened more than just this weekend we each were calling audibles on the fly you know in those in those categories and i think it's just because it gets in your head and you you do i mean you caught audibles as you were processing your you know you went you went back to the smoker you know multiple times with with different pieces of And sometimes that's necessary. Don't get me wrong.

So just because your plan or your program may not have that doesn't mean that there's one contest where you may have to call an audible to fix it, to make it that little bit better. If it's going to be bland and tough, you might as well throw something at it and see what happens. But your port was, the tenderness was perfect and the porky flavor itself was nice. And then the other stuff is what I think changed it. A lot of human error.

A lot of human error. And that's where I was on ribs too. So when I said that, it was, it was me talking to the man in the mirror. I just happened to have a good time.

Yeah. So steps moving forward. I've got a bunch of pork to cook this week for some catering that I have coming up. So I will be trimming. Well, it's a beautiful opportunity to practice. It is. I'll be trimming a bunch of those down into what I feel like I've come up with. And, buddy, let me tell you, I got home Sunday and was watching Liverpool soccer match. And I went and got my stack of notes. I mean, stack.

I have notes from all the classes that I've ever taken and just started going through them and reading everything that I could about pork and doneness and tenderness and injections and rubs and wraps. And, you know, and all just kind of, and this is going to sound terrible, but it all just kind of clicked into what I was doing early last year.

And or a variation of that and eliminating some of the stuff in there that you know, number one it's not me number two i don't like the taste of it so why am i doing it and there's no confidence in that when you when you don't have that right and so that's what's going to happen this week we're going to be doing some, A couple of practice runs through and just see if we can get this right, get this ship turned around here in a few weeks.

Well, the good news is you're a good enough cook to understand and recognize that and make those adjustments and get better, you know. And you're a good enough cook this weekend with your practice. If you run some of those butts and run your practice timeline, recipe, injection, everything, you'll know when you get to the end product.

Yeah. This is it. This is it. you know this is what i want this is this and i can and your next cook will go into it with like no questions no on the fly adjustments no looking over at this bottle of juice or shaker of that and go i'll try it somebody else told me to try it i'll try it you're not going to do that you're going to stick to the pot you know you're saying that now we're saying that yeah.

I probably just wait for me to get a bunch of free rubbing sauces people could just bring me stuff and oh he might try it on the fly and mess his stuff up it may happen you got a plan for ribs i do actually i do i did basically what you did i went through you know my notes in my phone and you know some i've got a couple of old notebooks and it's people think that what worked maybe 10 years ago when you took some sort of a class won't work now they say the barbecue you

know we've all heard it it's changed it's changed it's changed and and in some respects it has but there's still a lot of that old stuff that and i say oh people are using them right now you know absolutely, people are still using butcher's injection or cosmos or the blue top or guns hot or whatever and, It still works, and you just have to come up with a plan.

I kind of did the same thing you did. I went through all of my notes and my thought processes and looked at some side notes that I had made on what I thought about this class and maybe what I thought was perfect here. I've got a plan, and I've got two cases of VIRTUBS on order. Next weekend, I'm probably going to have some very happy friends.

And that's the way to do it it is get it back and try it out yeah so overall fantastic weekend a lot of learning a lot of fun a lot of giving each other shit that was that was that was so many laughs i i think slide and roses those guys over there and some of the other ones i think they spent their weekend watching us a whole lot because it was just a it was a ball of fun a lot a lot of fun henry jones and those guys did one killer potluck on friday night and i'm not typically a huge potluck

fan but man that shrimp wait i bet we ate three pounds a piece hate i hate potlucks yeah i can't stand them they're normally gut bombs right and this one man yeah henry knocked it out of the park with the low country boil which also i normally despise and hate and that one was i mean they dumped out all these shrimp and they were so perfectly seasoned and cooked and we just sat there everyone was standing around and they dumped out all these shrimp you can't do that room full of fat

guys i mean we we all attacked it like a bunch of piranhas and somebody just threw a goldfish in the tank it was like. Yeah it was a great pod luck guy george de marz actually it was his first, His first organizing event, if I'm not mistaken, I think George did a fantastic job. You know, Noel Kaye was there with Brian Stewart. They were the KCBS reps. That was their first rep duo together. You know, they've all, you know, shadowed and teamed up. And so it was nice

having those guys there. They did a fantastic job. Noel organized this event last year. So I'm sure that was a comfort thing for George to have in there. And then Alan Rothrock was there, which I'm sure gave a little bit of comfort to Noel and Brian of having a seasoned rep on hand. You know, it was a beautiful teamwork amongst everybody, the hosts, the organizers, the reps, the teams. It was just a flow of wealth. It did, and, I mean, it's a contest in the devil's spot in North Carolina that

I will find hard to keep off of my calendar. Yeah. A lot of fun, great time. Enjoyed the atmosphere that we cooked in was really cool and got some stuff to work on, you know? So moving forward, I'm excited. I'm going to try and develop some confidence in that category this week and we'll, we'll get her done. And the rest of the country can look out. If you do.

We'll see something else will fall off. That's how barbecue works. If it was simple and easy and everything tasted the exact same, we all wouldn't be doing, you know, The good thing about our chicken, my chicken was good and your chicken was very good. And even though I finished first and you finished fourth or fifth or whatever, that doesn't necessarily mean that mine was better than yours. Score-wise, it does, but...

And the beautiful part is we had two, we had both sides, but they were two completely different chickens. And that's, I hear a lot of people, they say, everybody's just cooking the same stuff and turn it in. And I'm like, no, they're not. You know, and that was a, that was a good example of that. You could still have and get judged fairly for it, not tasting the same, you know, one versus the other. Cause I'm sure first to fourth, we were probably less than two points apart.

You know i didn't i have not looked but i bet you we were less than two points apart and i'm pretty sure we were on the same table okay because well i don't know i was going to judge that on turn-ins but because you were in really early in the window and then i went super early too i was going to try and pull it up on kcvs here real quick but it's not letting me log again. Wish there was an easy way to find this on here. Yeah, chicken, we were 1.2 points apart.

We were on the same table. I finished first on the table, you finished second, and we were 1.2 points away from each other. And the beauty of that is, like I just said a while ago, we did not have the same chicken. We had the same piece of chicken, and we were both cooking thighs, and we were both on Well, you weren't on a stick burner on your chicken, but you're on the drum, but, but. Their cooking timelines and everything were not but sort of dissimilar.

And there were two different types of chicken. My finishing was a little bit different than your finishing. I think that was the biggest difference. And our textures were both different, too. Our textures were both different. Yep. And textures were different. My finishing was different than your finishing. But it's still only 1.2 points. That could easily flip-flop next weekend somewhere else. Absolutely.

Absolutely the same as everybody else right i'm always if you're in the top five, you you could have been first i mean that's just the way it goes i've said it before i've said it for years if i'm in the top 10 and especially in chicken where scores are typically pretty tight i'm nowhere near good enough to tell you how to find that extra two points right i don't think think anybody is and nobody is and that's my point is cook

to get in my goal is to get into the top 10 in all four categories and i i really shoot for the top five but that becomes that's you know exceedingly difficult and if i because if i'm in the top 10 in all four categories i'm in the running, you know that's right i'm in the game you know and that's all i can shoot for is to try to be in the game you know i don't want to get a home run in one category and bomb three you know i want to hit singles and doubles at all four absolutely absolutely well

that was a great rundown after that but we had a great weekend and both did a lot of learning so yeah what's your next one i think right now my next one is urbana the double in urbana virginia yeah same here i love that contest and i had a good year actually uh, finished reserve grand champion both days. Lost both days by a point each day uh but i'm not i'm not gonna have to find that point i said a while ago but uh hopefully i can find that point or at least somebody will lose one.

But that's my that's my next one is that double yeah same as us, yeah i got i got two or three weeks here to kind of iron out a few kinks in the real rib armor and see what we can do and we i'm not sure if you're aware of this or not but we have have a plethora of distractions throughout that four day period of that contest. Not aware of any such distractions. That is the first four days of the NCAA tournament. Yeah. It's never happened before. Okay.

Yeah. So I will be pulling in there Thursday as early as I can and getting the TV hooked up outside. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely going to have to have that figured out. Right. And my plan is, any of you listening, I'm going to have a TV going. Anybody else wants to bring their TV over and has a source they can hook it to? We're going to have multiple TVs going, and I'm going to bring the Gateway Go-To and the Blackstone and just keep ripping out food and washing some hoop.

We got to cook some chicken wings, man. Yeah, right? We got to. Let's do that. Yeah. Let's do that. Cool, man. All right. Well, thank you for your time, buddy. It's always an honor to be on here, and I'm shocked every time you invite me, but I'm glad you did. You should stop being shocked. You're basically a co-host at this point, so I'm sure you're going to be on a lot more in the future. Well, I hope so. Let's do it again, sir. All right, guys. Keep practicing. Keep cooking. Check us out.

Make sure to like and follow the podcast make sure to send it around and also you know take my own advice and go watch my own pork program on barbecuechampsacademy.com all right buddy we'll see you in a few weeks thanks have a good one thank you for listening to pit master an old virginia smoke podcast be sure to subscribe and like the podcast rate the podcast and to share it out with your friends. Also, be sure to check out the Old Virginia Smoke TikTok as well.

Old Virginia Smoke, one word. That's all you have to search for. It's hilarious. Tune in next week for another great episode of Pitmaster. For companies interested in advertising, please contact Old Virginia Smoke directly via www.oldvirginiasmoke.com. Pitmaster, an Old Virginia Smoke podcast, is edited by Chris Zdenka. Pitmaster, an Old Virginia Smoke podcast, is a property of Old Virginia Smoke LLC. Music.