Maryland, Crab, Hickory

My team-mate Kenny Goodman and I cooked the KCBS contest in Salisbury MD this past weekend which had 92 teams competing and close to $20k in prize money. I cooked this event in its first year and if my hazy memory is correct there were 18 teams. Amazing growth in this 'sport'.

We were pretty happy with our food but obviously still need to figure out the Jambo pit. The pit cooked great... no problem keeping a nice clean fire... but it does cook different from the Backwoods Smokers we are used to so I guess we'll have a bit of a learning curve. So no trophies but I did bring home some awesome fresh crabmeat that was loaded with nubs of roe. Wonderfully fresh and really didnt need any seasoning at all. We used some of this crab in our chefs choice entry, which was a riff on our winning Jack Daniels chefs choice entry back in October.

Got home, cleaned the pit and stacked what must of been 1.5 cords of green hickory with some oak and cherry mixed in. Joe Regan who has done some tree work on our property hooked us up. I'm hoping this wood dries enough to use by the end of the summer.