Rant: old guy at the Georgia contest gave me one rib and changed how I sauce
Two months back I drove to a small backyard contest near Macon and got smoked by a guy running a rusty offset he built himself in 1998. After turn-ins he walked over, handed me a single spare rib off his pit, and just said 'sauce goes on the side, son, not the meat.' I stood there holding that rib and realized mine had been drowning in sauce the whole time to hide dry bark. He never gave me a recipe or anything, just that one rib and a nod, and my scores have gone up since I started saucing at the table instead. Anyone else get a tip at a contest that seemed tiny but totally flipped how you cook?
That line about saucing at the table instead of on the meat reminds me of my uncle Ray, who ran a roadside stand outside Athens for years and refused to put anything on his pork but salt and pepper. He'd hand folks a little cup of vinegar sauce on the side and tell them their taste buds weren't his problem. Took me until my thirties to get what he meant, which is that you can't fix bad meat with sauce, you can only cover it up. Now I keep my sauce in a squeeze bottle on the picnic table and let people ruin their own dinner if they want.