Several years ago, I watched a movie called "From Dusk Till Dawn." It was a pretty entertaining "gangsters on the lam" sorta tale, or it was until a little over an hour into the movie. The characters were in a club watching Salma Hayek do a seductive dance...which I personally found offensive and distateful. In fact, I rewound the scene and watched it 15 or 16 times just to really get an understanding of how offensive and distateful it was. Knowledge is power kids. Anyway, out of nowhere, after an hour-plus long story had been woven about criminals running from the law BOOM...VAMPIRES. Suddenly it became a supernatural story of crazy bloodsuckers, with that unseemly dance scene kinda serving as the dividing line. There was not even a hint that in the first 60 minutes that them freaky, big-toothed Transylvania mofos were going to play any part in the proceedings. It was jarring and abrupt and really felt like two totally different movies.
Now, in what feels like just as odd a pivot, I'm going from talking about unseemly dances and the undead to BBQ Pitmasters. Last week's episode, which again took place in a barnyard-like setting "just outside of Austin"...which still bothers me. Is it Dripping Springs? Hutto? Details matter people! Anyway, this week's competitors included Ernest Servantes, who hails from New Braunfels, Lynnae Oxley of Sugar's Championship BBQ in Portland, Oregon and Mark West of 10 Bones BBQ in Memphis. Servantes is the only one of the three to never win on Pitmasters. Oxley made it all the way to the finals a few years ago (the year it was filmed in Tryon) but came in second and West has finished in both first and last place in previous seasons. He was also wearing weird pants that looked like pajama bottoms. He said they had pirates on them, but I couldn't make any out. I saw pajamas, which people now consider proper attire for shopping at The Walmart. They're an ill fit with BBQ, but hey, to each his own. It was then revealed that the pitmasters would be cooking brisket and deer tenderloin. They, of course, went right to work on the briskets, which would take most of their alloted 10 hours to cook. Oxley injected her brisket with beer (among other things) and packed some spare meat around the brisket in the pan for insulation. Her rub sounded pretty standard (salt, sugar, pepper, garlic, onion) and she used a crazed orgy of wood...I should phrase that differently. She used oak, pecan, cherry and peach wood to smoke her brisket. A seemingly odd and disparate mix, but she wins a lot of contests doing it that way. Servantes injected his brisket with phosphates, beef concentrate and tequila. Patron and fatty beef strap don't seem to go together to me, but again he's from Texas and knows a metric buttload more about brisket than me, so I'm sure it works. He used a vertical smoker, which he said was perfect for long cooks. He then flashed back to his last Pittmasters performance. "I had gray meat," he remembered. Hey, it's no biggie Mr. Servantes. You're getting a little older and...wait, he might have meant his meat got discolored sitting in the box. That's probably it. Yeah. Pajama man and his assistant were drinking beer and just kinda sitting there at that point, which did not meet with judge Myron Mixon's approval. "Nobody up here knows what the hell he's doing," Myron said of the judges table. "I wouldn't be sitting around on my ass with $50,000 on the line." West had a plan, though. He had done A LOT of trimming of the brisket and was planning to cook it hotter and faster than normal. The deer wouldn't take long to cook either, so there was ample time for a PBR. Pajamas, beer and burning wood...a magical combination. About that time, Myron told everyone to put their crap down, because it was time for the Kingsford One-Bite Challenge. The winner of the challenge each week gets the advantage of deciding the turn-in order of the final boxes. The three were then handed salmon and told they had half an hour to do something with it. Oxley was elated, but the fellows were not. West didn't look like he'd butchered many salmon in his time. "He's just whacking," judge Tuffy Stone said. And then I laughed because he said "whacking." It was an apt description, he was over there justa whackin' it...with a knife, into pieces that would be hard to grill, I think. Servantes made up a little crab, avacado mixture to serve alongside his salmon. Oxley went the "Asian Tex Mex" route. I have no idea what that is, but it involved pineapple juice, teriaki and jalapenos. Myron said aloud "I don't want no sushi...no cut bait." He didn't get anything raw, quite the opposite in West's case. He got a torched pile of fish goop. Oxley's bites looked to be resting on part of a cane pole, or maybe a poo-covered celery stalk. I couldn't tell which, but it was certainly the most appeallingly presented. The judges liked it very much, calling it "perfectly cook" and "elegant." They liked Servantes' too but called it "creativity gone wild" and thought maybe the crab/avacado mix competed with the salmon a little too much. They liked West's balsamic glaze, but it was way overdone. Tuffy actually called it "a hot mess." Ultimately, Oxley won and decided she'd present first on the brisket and deer, then West, then Servantes. By now they were cooking the deer. West marinated his in Italian dressing and some other seasonings to get the "gamey" taste out, then added salt and pepper and wrapped it in bacon. Servantes used red wine vinegar as a marinade and added something called achiote. He also concocted a cherry-chipotle glaze to put on it. He did a reverse-sear cook on the deer. Oxley cooked hers with sassafras wood. It was getting time to finish the briskets. Servantes poured Coke all over his...well, he said "cola" because they don't drop product names on TV shows. I guess it coulda been Doctor Perky or Mountain Thunder or something but it was in a red bottle, OK. West had, miraculously, cooked his despite the late start and when he cut the thing HOLY WOW AT THAT DANG SMOKE RING. It was seriously one of the biggest I've seen. Oxley had a little trouble, though. She smoked her brisket in a big foil pan, loading it up with veggies and au jus. Well, as she and her assistant slid it into the smoker, it apparently got a hole in it and all the juices leaked out. She tried to save it. She smoked the point seperately from the flat. The flat was the part missing the juice, so she poured some of the point juice (hahah) in it and seemed satisfied with the results. At juding, Myron, Tuffy and Big Moe all liked Oxley's deer. They called it "melt in your mouth tender." West got high marks for his flavor, but cooked it past the medium rare judges want to see. Servantes' deer was called "bold and peppery." They really seemed to like the cherry-chipotle glaze. Then it was brisket time. Oxley presented the judges with slices and burnt ends. However, Big Moe did a typical test on the slices, where you lay the slice down, pick up one end and bend it toward the other end, almost like you're folding it in half. When he did, the slice broke in half, which it shouldn't because that indicates it was overdone or dry. She squirmed uncomfortably as he did so. He liked her burnt ends, but said they were too sweet for his liking. Myron said he liked the slices but really like the burnt ends. He called them "the money shot" and said they melted in his mouth. And then I laughed. Tuffy didn't seem to think the slices were overcooked, though you could see a slice broken in half in front of him, indicating that maybe he'd done the same test as Moe? He liked the flavor. Mark was next. Myron said his slices were the best thing he ate that day, but said his burnt ends were chewy and underdone. He'd actually not tried them before putting them in the box. WAMP WAMP! Big Moe, like me, said the smoke ring on the brisket was the biggest he'd ever seen. Servantes was last. His meat was not gray this time, so that shot the doctor gave...sorry. We decided that meant discolored from sitting in the box already didn't we? We did. Moe said the brisket had a deep flavor. Myron said the taste was great and Tuffy liked the heat brought from the black and red pepper he used. The only negative was the lack of burnt ends. He said he was from Texas and AYE GOD Texans do what they want with cows, so mind your own dang business hippie! Actually he said Texans don't really do burnt ends. Moe said that would have shown an added skill level, so that hurt him. That brought about the judges deliberations away from the contestants. It was obvious West wasn't going to win despite doing a superior job on the brisket slices...the burnt ends having the consistency of super balls did him in. They went back and forth on the merits of what Oxley and Servantes turned in. Big Moe cast his brisket lot with Servantes, preferring the flavor and knocking Oxley for her doneness. Then all of a sudden TUFFY SPROUTED FRIGGIN' FANGS AND COWERED IN THE FACE OF GARLIC!!!!!!!!! NOSFERATU! Literally out of nowhere, Tuffy said Servantes' brisket was a little underdone in the way Oxley's might have been a little overdone...but he didn't really even concede it was overdone, making reference to the meat's "perfect doneness." Now, I get that when watching any competition or reality show, there are going to red herrings. Some pertinent stuff is going to be edited out when it happens, then reintroduced when convenient or necessary for drama-building. Maybe that happened. But seriously, there was no mention of Servantes' brisket being underdone when the judges were eating it. Oxley's was pretty obviously overcooked or dry because of her unfortunate pan mishap...which was beared out by Moe's little bendiness test. So, when they came back out, told West he was third, then crowned Oxley as the winner, I wasn't surprised. Did we just not see all the comments on Servantes' brisket? Did they feel bad for Oxley on the pan tear and figure she'd have won minus that? Was it a wacky curveball? Was I drunk and inattentive at key junctures of the show? Who knows, but the ending didn't feel right. They could have at least offered up a dance that offended my sensibilities so terribly I watched it repeatedly. For more on BBQ Pittmasters, you can go right here.
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