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SCA Competition Steak Practice & Rub Trials

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Old Dave:
Can you steak cooking pros help a rookie?? I hope to do a few SCA contests next year and could use some help. Would like to have some info on the judging process. I think I understand taste, presentation, and doneness, but would like to know how they judge texture? How many judges taste your product?

Searing vs Charring...all the winning pictures of the steak boxes show char marks on the meat. I would assume that real searing for that great nutty flavor from the Milliard reaction or caramelization on the steaks is not being taught to the judges because I just don’t see it in any pictures.  What say you? Is there any chance of winning with a real seared steak?

Ok, here is my setup for these events assuming I must have char marks to have a chance at winning.

I will be cooking steaks on my Weber Jumbo Joe kettle on this cold 33 degree morning.





I have a Stainless Steel charcoal basket that matches the size of my Grill Grates and also my Weber cast iron griddle if a fellow could win with that setup. I start with a full chimney of lump and pour about 1/4th of it cold into my charcoal basket. I fire up the remaining lump and add it to the basket and add a chunk of hickory.



I’ll go ahead and show the griddle setup but doubt if I will use it in competition steak cooking.



Add the grill grates and let it heat up for about 20 minutes.



Get my tools ready as it goes pretty fast.



I let the meat warm up for about 45 minutes. The full size steak is prepped with my favorite steak rub and and would be the steak I would turn in at a contest. The two half steaks are part of my on going rub trials.



Checked the cooker after the 20 minute warm up and found it at about 625 degrees on the Grill Grates and this should be perfect for the char marks.



Cooked my turn-in steak to medium and it looked pretty good coming off of the cooker.



Then cooked the two half steaks for my rub trials.







I think the competition steak looks pretty good.





I used all three pieces for the rub trials and my favorite still won out on this round.

Ok, does anyone know if the cooks use a marinade, maybe some oil, maybe a butter of some type? How about a finish rub? Talking about rubs, what are the cooks using? How much heat is being used in the rubs? Tell this rookie how to cook a winning SCA steak?

How did I do on my practice cook? What can I do to make it better?

LostArrow:
Tim was a judge at the world championships two years ago , & I was there hanging with one of the teams.
After the judging tim pulled out a jar of moonshine ( real homemade ) and talked about the judging.
Teams get their steaks about 2-3 hours before cooking.
Since many of the comps are fund raisers the teams may have to cook a lot of steaks!
Several teams used big cookers for the regular steaks & small grills ( usually a Weber kettle ) for the turn in steaks
Grill grates were common , although I prefer an all over sear the crosshatch sear apparently gets higher marks for appearance.

sliding_billy:
If you could come down here and cook a few for me, I'd happily test them for you LOL.  No idea how it would fair in a comp., but it looks delicious.

teesquare:
Dave-

There were 5 of us judging, and 84 competitors. I grew up not knowing that a pig could produce anything other than bacon....but it was sensory overload :D :D :D ( The contest was covered by the Food Channel..."Eating America" with Anthony Anderson )

With 84 competitors, there were as many different ways to do steaks as you can imagine. And - Grill Grates were a common site and were used to produce some beautiful grill marks. And - there were some that had figured out that they could flip the Grill Grates over - and get the Maillard reaction to occur over a greater surface area. No grill marks that way - but those are decorative and there is a move to less black "crunchy" marks because of the medical information/warning about burned red meats and carcinogenic risk increase. I am not voicing my opinion - just the current stuff that is talked about at this time....

Here were the things I looked for in a really good steak:

1. Color and appearance - what does it look like when I open the box?

2. What is the smell I get coming off of the steak?

3. Cut/texture - is it grainy or mushy? Over marinated or brined?

4. Correct doneness - Medium - not medium well, or medium rare...medium is the standard.

5. Taste and mouth feel - You get these at the same time - so it is hard to separate them.

I can tell you that most of them were pretty good. There were a few memorably bad ones ( Some guy thought that soaking and basting his steak in honey was "the" thing to do.... :-X.
The ones that stood out the most for me were ones that tasted like a good steak first, then had selective "supportive" flavors. Smoke profile was not part of the testing equation because there is no method of cooking that is not allowed. So- some had a hint of wood or charcoal flavor cooing - and some were obviously cooked using gas.

Hope that helps. I hope that Brett will have a chance to comment more on this as the head of the SCA.

Pappymn:
I found a picture of Tee doing the judging.  Look at the dedication on his face.

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