Need help planning a rib cookoff party

[Mike_S]

Hi all! How would you go about planning a rib cookoff party? This is VERY casual (far from a sanctioned event) among friends and family. I am predicting 8-12 teams with 120-150 guests. We did this in the past from around 2009-2011 where the teams' ribs provided the protein for dinner and guests were encouraged to bring sides and appetizers (this is a format I think we would like to keep). Guests then placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place votes in the ballot boxes of the cook teams. The issue I am having comes to judging, since most people won't be eating 8-12 ribs (the ribs are part of the meal meaning people are eating whole ribs, so sampling with one bite 8-12 isn't possible, nor desirable since we do not want to waste ribs). So this means people are going to grab a handful of ribs that LOOK the best, but they may not taste the best. This will give the best looking ribs the most chances to receive votes. While appearance is definitely a factor in voting, we would like to try and have the ribs distributed as evenly as possible. I'm not a huge fan of assigning guests to try certain teams ribs since the primary goal is everyone tries what they want and they leave with full bellies. Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[timothy]

Are there going to be different categories like sweet vs heat, sauce vs no sauce, spicy etc?
That will make choices for most of the quests.

 

[Mike_S]

Are there going to be different categories like sweet vs heat, sauce vs no sauce, spicy etc?
That will make choices for most of the quests.

Nope. Just ribs (baby backs since they cooker faster). Teams have gotten real creative in the past with different styles.

 

[Brett-EDH]

I'm not a huge fan of assigning guests to try certain teams ribs since the primary goal is everyone tries what they want and they leave with full bellies. Any thoughts or ideas?

then let the attendees choose which ribs they want to try. each rib needs to come from a tray and each unique tray needs a number. not all ribs may receive a vote depending on you attendees.

so 8-12 cooks would yield 8-12 serving trays of ribs, each tray being numbered 1 through 12 (if you actually have 12 cooks).

people can vote on whatever they eat in rank order. have a score card pre-made and handy for each person to rank each tray. then collect all the score cards. one scorecard per attendee with their name on the top of it to avoid duplicates.

the trays that have the highest rank of votes, wins, in then decending order from most to least votes.

score card example:

1st place rib - tray 4
2nd place rib - tray 8
3rd place rib - tray 3
4th place rib - tray 1
5th place rib - tray 10
and so on

since you're ranking 5 places (in this example), the tray that ranks 1st place on someone's score card would get 5 points, the 2nd place tray would get 4 points, 3rd place is 3 points and so on.

then add up the total points earned for each tray and you'll have your winners.

you could rank ALL the trays using this formula so each tray can earn votes. this way all votes are weighted, with a 1st place vote being worth more than a 3rd place vote (5 points versus 3 points).

a weighted point system with a lot of entrants should yield a diverse voting result. unless of course there's a clear and obvious winner/first choice.