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Fuel choices of top barbecue competition teams revealed
By Carlene Phelps
National BBQ Festival Organizer
Douglas, Georgia, welcomes hundreds of the nation’s top barbecue cooks to
this small Southeast Georgia town each year. They come to compete in one
of the most prestigious events — the National Best-of-the-Best BBQ
Invitational. These are teams who rank in the top 1% of barbecue cooks in
the world and rely on their perfected recipes, cooking devices and fuels to
deliver the best barbecue ever to be experienced by a barbecue judge’s taste
buds.
When completing team applications for the event, chief cooks are asked to
check all fuels used in their cooking process. This has given us the
opportunity to look back over several years to see if there are trends
developing and what the top competitors choose when they have every fuel
choice available to them. All the choices are there: wood, charcoal,
pellets, gas and electricity. Restaurateurs and caterers can bring the same
pit they cook on every day and enter this event. Barbecue vendors on-site
can enter right off their commercial grills.
The three years from 2005-2007 was
compiled and furnished us with some very interesting results. In 2005, 77.7%
of cooking teams reported using only wood, charcoal or a combination of the
two. One year later, in 2006, this percentage had dropped to 66.2% using
what is considered the “purist type” fuels of wood and charcoal. In 2007,
even more barbecue cooking teams were adding pellets, gas and electricity to
the mix with the percentage falling to 53.5% choosing wood and charcoal
only.
While this is interesting information to a lot of people who enjoy taking a
little closer look at barbecue cooking teams, what about the top teams for
these events? What were their choices? It was easier to use 2007 teams and
fuels since they were close at hand and here is what we found. In the
National Best-of-the-Best Invitational, three of the top six teams used only
charcoal and wood while the other three teams added other choices to the
mix. In the Smokin’ on the Square VII OPEN, four teams chose only the two
top fuels. This also held true with the folks who finished in the top six in
OVERALL results as well. We have learned from this little bit of research
that about half of the top barbecue cooks in the country are using fuels
other than wood and charcoal as compared to over 75% just two years ago.
However, one thing has not changed! One judge expressed it to us this way,
“We get barbecue so good in Douglas that it makes our tongue want to slap
our brains out!” Yeah, he was a redneck. And yeah, he was right!
From surveys sent to teams following each event, several teams are quick to
report some of their favorite things about the National Best-of-the-Best
Invitational. Among their favorite things is the ability to choose any fuel
supply, having one hour between turn-ins, local ambassadors who spoil them
rotten and no garnish in the boxes. The National BBQ Festival committee just
sees it as giving barbecue teams the flexibility to have as much fun as they
possibly can while competing in a barbecue competition! For more information
about the National BBQ Festival, access us on the web at
www.NationalBBQFestial.com.
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