Veggies at the Royal

[Wayne Copeland]

Although veggies are not something we usually turn in at cook-offs, it is a sanctioned category at the American Royal. Two days before the Judging turn in, my team decided to cook and turn in potato boats as our entry. Turn in was at 10:30 A.M. We started cooking our pork butts at 10: P.M. the night before and had all our meats on the pit by 6:00 A.M. With everyone getting the meat,deserts, and everything else ready, we simply forgot about the potatoes until about 40 minutes before turn in. Although a couple of our group wanted to forget it, we decided to turn in fried potatoes which we started feverishly preparing and cooking. It seems that everyone had an idea on seasoning/appearance, so we ended up with a hod podge of potatoes, green & red bell peppers and lots of seasonings by all. It looked great and we quickly spooned it into the turn in tray and off to the Judges it went! After our turn in guy came back, we realized we had not tasted it so we all got a fork and sampled our multi colored cousine...it turned out so HOT that we all gasped and ran for the water cooler to cool our tongues and throats down. When the heat subsided, we all laughed about our concoction and joked about how the Judges would be scarred for life. It turns out we placed 77th out of over 500 entries....Go figure!!

[Wayne Copeland]

A real quick veggie meal to compliment your meat presentation is to get some mushrooms, wash them, season with salt/pepper and put them in a tinfoil tent with only a slight opening for the steam to get out. Before you close up your tent, put in a couple of tablespoons of butter and seal it up and put it on the pit for about an hour. Dont let the smoke get to them as they don't like smoke too much. You can do the same with potatoes, carrots and corn-on-the-cob (all in the same tinfoil tent) and you wont go wrong.