Over 500 pitmasters compete at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue in Kansas City, Kansas, in hopes of becoming the barbecue grand champion. Watch top competitors Tuffy Stone of Cool Smoke and Grant Basiliere of Que U fire up pork ribs, pork shoulders, beef brisket, and chicken in a fierce rivalry to win the title of best-in-class barbecue.

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Credits:
Producer: Connor Reid, Jay Simms
Director: Connor Reid, Murilo Ferreira, Jay Simms,
Camera: Murilo Ferreira, Carla Francescutti, DeVonte Brown, Jay Simms
Production Assistant: Bryna Vogel
Editor: Lucy Morales Carlisle

Executive Producer: Stephen Pelletteri
Supervising Producer, Operations: Stefania Orrù
Supervising Producer, Development: Gabriella Lewis
Audience Engagement: Frances Dumlao
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For more episodes of ‘Smoke Point’, click here: https://trib.al/wNBR1iD

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– To do well at this competition, you need everything to be perfect. You can cook your best food, but you need to hit those right tables of judges that just really enjoy eating your food and score you for it. – The American Royal World Series of Barbecue is the world’s largest barbecue contest

With 505 teams here this year. I like to say we’re the NFL of competition barbecue. – It is not for the faint of heart. I don’t think there’s more teams competing in a world championship than there will be this Saturday and Sunday. – [Competitor] First impressions of American Royal is just pure volume.

When you see 500 teams in one venue, the motor homes and the trailers, and the cookers, and the scale of it, how do they get everybody in here? But this venue is, you can’t get any better than a speedway. – My name is Rod Gray. I’m the CEO for the Kansas City Barbecue Society. We facilitate the event, tabulate the results and hand them over to the organizers so they can award the winners. – My name’s Tuffy Stone. I’ve been cooking the American Royal since 2005.

– Tuffy Stone with Cool Smoke is one of our top competitors. He’s definitely a veteran. He’s very exacting in what he does. He has very specific processes, he has a very specific timeline. He knows, ideally, that you have to recreate great barbecue every time you compete.

– Grant Basiliere from Gurnee, Illinois and Que U. – Que U won both the Invitational and Open last year and that’s an amazing accomplishment. The reps that were tabulating turned to me and said, “Has anybody ever won both contests?” It had never been done. – Winning the Invitational and the Open last year,

It’s a little overwhelming. Never been done before. This year coming back to the the Royal, there’s a little bit of pressure to win this thing once. To win it twice, that’s a huge deal. – At the American Royal, the way the judging’s gonna work is, they’re gonna have four meat categories.

And it’s pork ribs, pork shoulders, beef brisket, and chicken. – [Rod] The way the judges score barbecue is from nine to five. And then there’s a two if it’s inedible and then there’s one as a disqualification. So we judge on appearance, taste, and tenderness. – So you can place in each category.

I mean you can get a second, fourth, fifth, not win a category, but you can win the whole thing. Overall, that’s what we shoot for. I’m gonna start with chicken. We brine chickens. Chicken can be either chicken thigh or leg. I’ve always done chicken thighs. Process is a little bit more timely.

It takes me about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes to trim 16 perfect thighs. We’ve been using Springer chicken. They come in four packs. 16 is my recipe. I know it seems a little much, but I like cooking 16. I need that skin right there. Opening up this pack of chicken,

These three right away are gone. That, for appearance, sucks. You put that in a box and you got this piece of flesh with no skin around it. You want everything to look the same. So that’s a…we can’t use that. So I got one to work with right now.

With appearance, you want every piece to kind of look the same, especially with chicken. You can kind of clip off any kind of bones that are hanging or clean up the skin a little bit. Take this little piece right here, take it down to the bone and I’ll remove that,

And then I’ll remove this little tendon right there. We’re gonna leave the bone in and then I’m just gonna trim out some of these thicker pieces of fat and roll it over. Square it off, a little pillow of love. So this is what we’re shooting for 16 times. This is my chicken brine.

It’s got some sugar, some salt, a little bit of juices and all that good stuff. Trying to get a bunch of flavor into this thigh to help it kind of break down and get tender for me. So I just do this for about two hours and and go from there.

– So we’re in my trailer. We call it Camp Cool Smoke. Now it’s getting down to brining the chicken. I started off in a French kitchen. So my brine is mirepoix, which is a fancy way of saying carrots, onions, and celery. We have I think 21 chicken thighs.

We’ve tried to make them all just about the same size, the same shape. Salt, sugar, bay leaves, some peppercorns, Italian flat leaf parsley, and I’ve got some fresh thyme. Brines can be a really nice way of just elevating a dish. And we’re gonna let it soak for two hours.

I want, when these judges take a bite, they’re gonna get that rub, they’re gonna get that chicken, they’re gonna get that sauce. But as they get into it, I want some of the nuances of this brine to come together. What separates competition barbecue from backyard barbecue,

We’re gonna push the flavor a little bit more. It’s gonna be a little bit more assertive, it’s gonna stand out. Chicken’s been in the brine for two hours. We are gonna pull it out, put it on paper towels, and make sure it’s good and dry. You can see the skin’s white.

They’ve plumped up a little bit since we put them in the brine, soaked in some flavor. Put it in a couple of pans and we’re gonna refrigerate it and let it air chill till tomorrow morning when we’re gonna put a rub on it. – Brisket, it’s Snake River Farms.

They grade it on a silver, black, gold. These are gold American wagyu. I’m removing some of this fat on the backside. This weekend I am cooking two briskets each day. You want options when you’re cooking for this many people and such a big deal.

So this side is where I’m gonna try to pull from. That thickness is perfect. That’s pretty much what I’m looking for. I square it off to fit this aluminum pan. – So this is a wagyu brisket, aged 28 days. So this rub is gonna be very savory.

It’s gonna have salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, a touch of cumin, granulated garlic, granulated onion, and a little bit of turbinado sugar. I’m trying to put out a flavor profile that’s gonna be appealing to everybody. Some judge might like it salty, somebody might like it sweet, somebody might like it tangy.

My goal is for my taste to have a little bit of all of that. So now we’re gonna go into our injection. Coming from my culinary background, I’d never injected anything before until I got into competition barbecue. We’re gonna do a grid-like pattern. It’s not gonna be more tasty than the brisket itself,

But it’s gonna be really nice. – With competition barbecue, it’s a one-bite competition. You’re trying to get as much flavor in one bite for these judges to impress them. We inject brine, we season heavily, sauce it. It’s pretty intense. Pork is the one that takes the longest.

So I start that sooner than everything else. Pork shoulder. So right here is that money muscle. We trim that thing out and that’s where we get our slices with. It’s delicious, it’s cooked perfectly. Everybody’s doing money muscle. It seems a little ridiculous coming to these things and cooking five pork shoulders.

Judges, I’m sure they look forward to eating a money muscle. It is the best part. Even if I’m at home, I’ll take that whole thing right there. I’ll braise it out. Especially being from Pennsylvania, that is, pork and sauerkraut is huge on New Year’s Day. I have some nice monies here

And I’ll have more options to pick from when I slice these. I couldn’t be more excited to cook these things tomorrow. Pork brine already made. So I’m gonna start with all of the money muscles. In the injection, it’s a little bit of some apple juice, we do a little bit of maple syrup.

It does plump up really, really nice. Once it starts squirt some injection out, I know I’m there. Maybe this one’s gonna be what’s gonna take me over the top as far as taste, tenderness, and appearance. Money in the bank. – Now it’s time to start the pork.

We’re gonna come in with two rubs. It’s gonna be a sweet rub and a savory rub. I think it’s got all the flavors that would make anybody happy that likes pork. And if you don’t like pork, you shouldn’t be here anyways because this is all about beef, pork, and chicken.

This is apple juice-based pork injection and it’s got some brown sugar in there too. So the spicy rub, and the brown sugar and the apple juice, it’s kind of nice. And right now, in my mind, everybody’s still tied for first place. It doesn’t start to change until we turn in chicken tomorrow.

– Injections are done. Everything’s done for tonight. Everything’s in the fridge hanging out. We’re gonna get up tomorrow, 5:30, light the pits and get some meat cooked. So that’s it. – It’s all fun and games right now. Everybody’s casual, loosey-goosey. But as it gets closer to turn-in, it’s laughter and all this fun,

All of a sudden gets to be a little bit more quiet and a little bit more intense. – Tonight I’ll be in bed at nine o’clock. We’ll be full on concentrating on cooking great food tomorrow. It’s 7:00 AM, we got briskets fired at 6:30.

Pork went on at seven, four hours until turn in. So I’m gonna keep these things dialed about 300 degrees, season ribs in about 10 minutes and go from there. – How’d you sleep last night? – Horrible. I’m working in about three hours. Yep, allergy season. (Grant laughs) Kicks my ass.

7:00 AM and these pork shoulders are going on. I’m gonna take these for about an hour 45, two hours. Get some good color on them. And then I’m gonna wrap and then check them in about an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes after I wrap.

– If you come in here, you’ll see I’ve got some ribs here. They’re St Louis Cut. I’ve cut these a little bit smaller because it’s all about concentrating on the best bones. My brisket flats, I got my brisket points. They’re cooking to doneness. Over here, I got my pork butts.

It’s a Texas crutch. They’ve been wrapped in aluminum foil now. Cut the money muscle off and I’m just checking for doneness. They’re still feeling a little snug, they’re temping good, but it’s a combination of temperature and touch. So we’re gonna let these cook for about another 10, 15 minutes.

We’ll pull them off, we’ll let those rest. – Around 10, 15. I like to seize my ribs about an hour before I put them on. We injected these last night and you can tell they took really well to it. Looking forward to cooking them. This is old school right here.

This is Cimarron Docs, it’s a very popular one with all barbecuers. And then the next one I’m gonna put on, I’m gonna keep this one secret. You can’t give everything away. I cook four racks of ribs. You only need to throw six bones in the box.

We shoot for 10, because it fills the box and it looks really cool. 8:15, we’re gonna fire some ribs. We’re gonna get them on here. Right in there is some Blues Hog lump charcoal, in that basket. Fill it up just about to the top. Again, a full basket will get you

Six, seven hours of a cook time. When it’s about ready to fire, I’ll throw about three of these pecan wood chunks, two or three of these pecan wood chunks on there just to help out with the flavor. Fit them in snug. I’m on the Gateway Drums. I wanted to start doing competition and I was thinking about doing an offset. These were very popular and they were winning. They’re a ton of fun to cook on. You’re always moving, spinning, flipping, efficient, a lot of good flavor,

And you can get four of them going at the same time. It’s like working a saute line. It’s a good time, it’s fun. – I’m cooking with hickory, I like to split it. I’ve got a tool here that I can split it really small. My process is harder.

If you want to like set it and forget it, I’m not your guy. These little bitty logs burn up quick, so we have to stay on top of it and feed it as needed. And I’m cooking on a traditional Texas offset pit. You look at that stack right now

And it’s running clean as a whistle. I want to treat smoke like salt and pepper. I want to treat it like a seasoning. The bigger the cut, more smoke, the lighter the meat, less smoke. But I like a clean stack. We’re getting our chicken thighs. They were brined, they were air-chilled all night.

Now we’re just coming in with our rub and we’re seasoning them up. I’ve got three different rubs. All of them got different ingredients. Some of them share ingredients. I’m kind of walking this dance between trying to make it look pretty for the judges

And at the same time you have it look like barbecue. – When you talk to competitors all weekend long here, if they’re turning in chicken thighs, they’re gonna talk to you about bite through skin. Not about crispy skin, but about skin that when you take that first bite

Of that piece of chicken, your teeth bite through the skin. And it’s harder than it sounds. – And then we’re gonna put it up on the hot part of our grill. And the reason I want to cook hotter up there, it’s that pursuit of hopefully

Being able to give these judges a bite through skin, because they really like if you can give that to them. – Chicken prep. I wrap these just to help with the shape of them. Trying to get 16 all to look the same. So when I do plate up, I have plenty of options.

I got two different seasonings I’m doing. Sweet, savory, bold kind of seasoning. Kind of place them down. What I’m trying to avoid is any kind of thumb, like that. Just trying to avoid smudging it up. I’m just trying to season these all evenly for appearance purposes.

And after I do this I’m not gonna touch them. And they’re gonna go on in about an hour. This time of the day, a little hectic. You got multiple meats you’re worrying about. I do need to give my ribs a little peek, maybe a little flip, as I do, I’m gonna wrap those

In about 45 minutes if they’re there. – When we’re doing competition barbecue, timing is critical. If we get too rushed and we don’t scrutinize every piece of meat that goes in, it could come back to haunt you. So I’m getting ready to check a brisket and they’re getting close to being done.

Part of it is temperature, part of it is feel, and that is feeling really good. So I’m gonna go ahead and pull this off and I’m gonna let this meat rest. But now I’m coming in just to check the doneness of this pork butt. They’re close. They’re probably about five, six degrees

Off from being done. The meat was put on at three, they were wrapped at seven so, it’s 9:22 and the pork butts are feeling good. All right, we got four butts off. The briskets are off. The brisket flats and the points are both off. – We are 40 minutes to turn in.

Still have one kind of brisket lagging, it’s a big guy. But it will be fine. Again, I have options. And then this chicken, I’m gonna check in about five, six minutes. – Our turn-in times last 10 minutes long. They’re every 30 minutes for the four categories. Chicken starts at 11:55, ribs are 12:30,

Pork is one o’clock and brisket is 1:30. – [Grant] I’m gonna get a peek at these chickens. Those look great, I’m gonna roll with them. So what I’m gonna do here is I’m gonna try to find eight that I love that are all the same size and shape

And I’m gonna get them into one pan. So I’m gonna go eight to eight. I wouldn’t hand that in, it’s kind of wonky, it’s shaped differently. So I’m looking for all the same shape. Make sure that skin kind of adheres to the meat. So this is the eight that I really like.

It’s gonna go that half pan all by itself. Pay attention to it, big time. – Chicken’s cooked to the doneness that we’re looking for. Now we’re gonna dip it in the sauce, put it back on the cooker just to lightly set. We get into these entries,

It starts to get more and more focused. I do my best work nervous. I do my best work with a little bit of edge. You’ll see my demeanor change when we start getting into when the chicken goes on for me, I get a little quieter. Chicken’s very precise.

– Ooh, I got split skins which isn’t great, right there and there. I cooked these same chickens last weekend and I got no split skins and now they all want to split. Which, it makes…there’s no rhyme or reason behind it. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.

I’m gonna pick out six of my not-prettiest ones because that’s what didn’t split. And you know, appearance scores will happen, you know, but, yeah it’s not a good way to start off the day but, it is what it is, right? I can’t remember the last time I had to split skins on chicken.

It’s not like, seriously, it sucks big time. So I got one, two, three. (Grant sighs) Yeah, this sucks. Yeah, it’s not a good way to start off the day but, yeah this sucks. To do well at this competition, you need everything to be perfect. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna sauce them.

I’m gonna try to find the six that I like, all the same size with no split skins. So with appearance you want every piece to kind of look the same, especially with chicken. It just looks really good in a box. We take some of the seasonings that we seasoned this with

And we grind them up to a nice fine powder just to kind of apply right before we plate up to give it that one last little pop. I’m gonna do two little tastes, I’m gonna just make sure the tenderness is good and then see where the flavor’s at. Fantastic.

– We have got to give ourselves enough time to review. Part of it is through touch, we can use our eyes, we can see moisture. In some cases we can do a sample to know whether it’s got the texture that we’re looking for or the flavor that we’re looking for.

All right, so go ahead and paint them to the perimeter. All right, touch that. That looks good to me, go ahead and touch that. Touch that, that looks good. Touch right there, you can go into this one next. All right, let me position, and then we will dock them again.

– [Grant] All right, I have a couple more options than I think, I didn’t think that guy was gonna make it. Super pretty. What I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna get the back end of this with a little bit of sauce so I can stick this finishing dust

Right on the back of it for one last pop. This is boxing time. And then all I’m gonna do is just place it in there. Like I’m going center it up just a little bit more. – Actually that was good right there. Now we’re putting it into our box

And working on presentation to turn in. Tell them to hold it just like that and don’t squeeze. All right. – I don’t wanna mess around here, especially with being 500 teams in a four minute walk. Four minutes, huh? That’s what this is gonna take you? – Four minutes. – Let’s roll.

– All right, thank you. Yeah good, because I’m getting a little stressed out. – [Rod] Contests like the American Royal, hundreds of people are trying to turn in at the same time. It is very stressful. I’ve seen some of the best competitors on the circuit get disqualified because they’re pushing the envelope.

– My adrenaline is totally kicking right now. My heart’s probably pounding a million miles a minute and like, my ultimate goal is to not fall and to keep my box about as steady as I can. Oh, excuse me ladies. Thank you. – Just turn that around. – Thank you.

– So we seat six judges at a table. In addition to the six judges, we have a person called a Table Captain whose responsibilities are to go out and get in line, bring back those six samples, make sure all the judges get their numbers written on their cards and their plates correctly.

And then the Table Captain shows them all the entries they judge for appearance. Once we’re done judging for appearance, then they start to pass these boxes and judges remove a sample. And once that’s done they go to work judging for taste and tenderness, and they write their scores on a card.

When the whole table’s done we collect those cards and then they go off to tabulation where we have a group of folks keying in those scores. – [Grant] I’m gonna check ribs, see where we’re at with color, see if we’re ready to wrap. I think these are right where they need to be.

That seasoning’s tacked on there, It looks real good. I love the color, so I’m gonna go ahead and pull them, and then get my wrap process going. Apple juices, seasonings, turbinado sugars, maple, I mean we’re just getting it all in that wrap. We want somewhat of a flavor bomb. It’s a one-bite competition,

So we’re gonna try to get as much flavor into these. – The idea is to take one bite, but most judges probably take two, maybe three if they love it. If you eat everything put in front of you while you’re judging that day, you’ll eat over two pounds of meat.

They might be happy for a while but I think they’ll ultimately be miserable. – [Tuffy] So Jeff’s handing me the ribs. We are gonna season them with seven ingredients on both sides. Put them in the foil, do the Texas crutch again. We’re gonna cook them for about another hour and a half

And then check for doneness. And a little apple juice. People talk about a rib that’s falling off the bone. If you really get good at cooking ribs and your meat’s falling off the bone, it’s overcooked. We’re looking to cook this rib to where we can take a bite where

Our teeth land on the meat, it comes cleanly from the bone but the rest stays there. It’s got a nice succulent, silky chew. – And I’m gonna just start cutting. I could just tell by cutting it, you can probably get five good bites out of this one.

My certain process is, I slice them, I sauce them, I throw them back on the pit for a little bit. I think it warms them a little bit and you can let that sauce kind of tack on there. – We’re gonna put some sauce on both sides.

Put them back on the cooker just to let them lightly set. Slice them and pick our best, put them in the box. – [Grant] The prep for turning boxes in can be stressful. What’s not stressful is when you slice a rib and it just feels luscious. It’s not a wedding for 350,

Just putting six pieces of meat in a box and sending it. But it can be pretty stressful. – [Tuffy] Behind, behind, coming through. – Right here. – [Tuffy] All right, this is a heavy box. Do not press down on the top. – [Tuffy’s Teammate] Yes sir. – I like the color on my pork so, I’ll go ahead and wrap it. I mean you could just see that fat’s nice and rendered out, that color’s really good. Fat is your friend, butter is delicious. So what I do is I come and I just hit it with some of my liquids.

I need to get some apple juice in there. Just kind of hit it over the money a little bit. One of these glass bottles for five butts. And then I’m gonna come back over the top with everybody’s favorite, maple syrup. Maple syrup and pork is delicious.

I don’t know who started it but I appreciate them. This is a turbinado sugar, sugar in the raw. I’ll use this. I find that this, cooking such high heat in my wrap, it doesn’t get as dark as say, brown sugar. And then I’m gonna come back over the top, a little secret.

This is another seasoning. I just like getting in there. There’s some dried onions, some paprika, some wood flavors. I’m just gonna come in here with just sort of an extra pop in the wrap and then I’m just gonna… butter going right on top of that money muscle

And just make it that much more delicious. – [Rob] Mouthfeel’s important, especially like pork. I think one of the ideas is if you can smash that pork to the roof of your mouth, it’s probably overdone, mushy for example. So you still want it to have some body, some integrity.

– [Grant] Back on the pit at 300. Boom. See you in an hour. – We’re in the thick of it. It might not be a sport, but it’s not for wimps. So these are the money muscles and we’re just hitting them with a little bit of sauce all the way around.

There’s a lot of steps in competition barbecue, and the crucial steps come down to trying to pick the best pieces of meat that we’re doing. So we cooked four butts and we’re just scrutinizing it, evaluating it for taste, tenderness. – Tenderness is the the stressful part of this.

It’s the last thing that you actually get to taste. Again, you can work on appearance, looks good. Tenderness, you don’t slice that piece of brisket or that pork shoulder until a couple hours after it’s off. So while it’s sitting there, you don’t know how it’s gonna slice,

How it’s gonna, you know, hold up. And you could go a little under and you can go a little over. I’m removing the money muscles. I’m gonna take a little end piece off just to see where I’m at with flavor and tenderness. Good, tenderness good. Take this fat off and expose that bacon.

I turn in what they call the bacon. Underneath the fat cap, there’s like this nice stringy bacon, it’s delicious. It’s actually cooked really, really well. I’m super happy with it. Kind of break this up, not too much. But I want to get into the pieces that I wanna put right in the box.

Count those real quick. – [Grants Teammate] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. – [Grant] I’m good, go. Go, I don’t wanna look at it. – [Grants Teammate] Why not? – [Grant] Because it’s really good and I just, I don’t know. I just don’t wanna mess with it again.

– Okay. – Okay, that one’s good too. – [Grant’s Teammate] Yeah, this is a good pork box my friend. – Today, I felt really good about the texture of everything but the worry is, air is the enemy to barbecue and as it gets in that box and it goes to the judges,

And it finally sorts to the tables. Hitting it with little glaze felt like, what we did was probably the smart move. So we’ve turned in chicken, we’ve turned in pork ribs, we’ve turned in pork shoulder. We got one category left to go, it’s beef brisket.

The window will open at 1:25 and it closes at 1:35. Because we only got that much real estate to work with, so we’re like a carpenter when it comes to barbecue. We measure twice and we cut once, hopefully. All right, here’s what I did, I counted nine. One, two, three, four,

Five, six, seven, eight, nine, because that’s a bet. – All right, so I’m gonna go on either side of this brisket and get a slice, and see what side I’m gonna kind of shoot for as far as tenderness goes. Good way to look at it,

If you can bend it, give a little tug, and that’s just a little tight. It eats really well. See how this side does. I can already tell slicing it, it’s gonna be a little bit more tender. And you just kind of get a little pull. That’s where you want to go with tenderness.

I just do a nice trimmed brisket. We sauce it just right so it has a nice sheen, it doesn’t look dry. We shingle it just right, so each it is just perfect. I shoot for seven, maybe eight slices in a box. – Beautiful box. – Yep, scoot. – [Grant’s Teammate] Good job.

– It’s gonna take about four minutes for the box to get done. I think that needs to be tucked down a touch, the slice itself. Happy motoring. All right, that’s a wrap. – We instruct the judges to pick up a slice of brisket and it should pull apart somewhere near the middle.

And then you’re instructed to sample that brisket from where it pulled apart. That’s probably the most tender point of it. Regarding the smoke ring, they’re specifically instructed not to judge based on smoke ring because it can be recreated with chemicals. So seriously, we specifically instruct our judges

Not to judge based on smoke ring. – In three and a half hours at 5:00, so if y’all come with us, we’ll see whether we got our butts whooped or whether we get a ribbon at the rule. – [Announcer] In 13th place. 861, Hot Coals Barbecue. – [Announcer] In 12th place, 13958 (indistinct). – Yeah! – Let’s go! – Yeah! F–k yeah. – [Grant’s Teammate] Good job, guys. Nothing to regret. – [Grant] Ribs weren’t as pretty as I wanted them to be. Chicken had a little hiccups, but the pieces that we ate were pretty good. I loved pork today, I thought the money was good, pull was really nice.

Had to fuss around with it for a little bit. Brisket seemed all right, I just wish it was a little bit nicer presentation, a little bit more uniform slices but, sometimes it’s just the nature of the beast. You just gotta work with what you got. So been a good time.

– We had a great time. We didn’t get a call, but we’ve had good fortune here before. It was great to see everybody get to get up on the stage, grab their trophy, grab their ribbons. As far as our cook went, we were very satisfied. We were happy with our chicken, our ribs,

Our pork shoulders, our brisket. Chicken was a tad salty, but we had a great time, saw a lot of old friends. I hope we were able to give you a glimpse into how we sometimes spend our weekends. Competition barbecue, you can meet some amazing people. You can learn a lot.

It’s a lot of fun. – The American way, may your name be called last. Cheers. – [Group] Cheers.

50 Comments

  1. How to kill the natural flavor with ketchup 😂😂😂 they put so much work into it for hours…and then they put sugar,msg, tomato-sauce on everything, which dominates every other flavor. And they do it to every meat, so everything will likely taste similarly.

  2. In my opinion, there's too many contestants. 500? How can you accurately rate every dish when some are probably cold while others are warm and more importantly how can you distinguish your 6th dish from the 3rd? I feel like there comes a point where you've had so much meat that your mouth is plagued with butter, oils and sugar and I don't know that you can properly rate your next dish. ehh

  3. Without a control, who knows which judge values and recognises a particular taste / flavour / texture, what could be perfect for one may be too salty / not salty enough / too soft / not enough bite etc for others. Rolling the dice really.

  4. That chicken doesn’t look very premium, more battery farmed chlorinated chicken!😅…should be free range,organic corn fed chicken.

  5. 以前被鄙視的注脂注汁牛肉 不是本身肉汁的各種外添加 現在反倒成為了一派潮流….

  6. There are some questions and misconceptions in the comments. Competition BBQ really isn’t the same as restaurant or home cooked BBQ. It is prepared to a specific standard based on (in this case) KCBS judging. It’s judged on appearance, taste and texture with taste weighted 4 times more than appearance in the score calculations.

    This is a World championship as the KCBS is an international organization sanctioning contents in a good number of countries. For example, Australia, Italy, Netherlands…. Of course, travel to the US and securing equipment and food would likely be prohibitively expensive.

    Not as much food is wasted as it appears. Judges are allowed to take home what they judged and left overs are collected and shared with staff and volunteers and in some cases donated.

    Anyone can be a judge. You will need to join the Kansas City BBQ Association and sign up for a Certified BBQ Judging course.

    My experience is with KCBS, there are many other organizations that sanction events.

  7. They're all great "chefs" that can present a perfectly cooked piece of meat, so it looks like it's all down to the seasoning… or?

  8. 0:58 SIX-TIME WORLD BARBECUE CHAMPION

    But you guys only compete in the US, compete only with Americans… how come you guys claiming WORLD Barbecue Champion??

    Unless you guys truly compete from around the world, like example: Barbecue from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, Turkmenistan, South Africa, Kenya… then we can talk about "WORLD Barbecue Champion".

    Damn Americans (US people) really think they are the world huh?

  9. So this is a competition that judges the perfect look and not the actual taste. As long as it looks edible who cares if it look’s perfect just needs to taste good.

  10. Bigger is not better… tabulation error, seriously? BBQ is a globally recognized practice and technique. Some unique or defined by a country, region or even a state. No competition should be able to claim itself as a “World Series of BBQ”.

  11. Can we maybe see this from an actual winner’s perspective rather than someone who doesn’t even place in the Top 10?

  12. The world: let's put some salt an pepper on our good meat
    US: let's get any crap we can find in a plastic tray, cover it in excessive spices and inject it with some oversugared apple juice 😂

  13. Has any Competitor ever put "illicit substances" on a finished piece of meat? To, you know, give it that extra something special.

  14. More importantly, is this an event open to the public? Can people come in to access or try some of that BBQ food?

  15. i like my pork ribs fall off the bone, other ribs ive had at fests are too damn tough. nasty, the fat you cant eat….

  16. Cooking dozens of pounds of meat to serve maybe 2 pounds of it and trash the rest is the definition of American excess. Each competitor should get 1 of each item and that’s it.

  17. I will never not be entertained by watching people at the top of their game doing what they love. I don't care what the thing is. This is a show about humanity, not food.

  18. I’ve been seeing a lot of comments about “how can they really judge the competitors offer a few bites” and wanted to mention some things I’ve heard from my short time in the industry that reinforces that exact idea.

    Trophies are nice. I don’t have any for my cooking/BBQ. But I do have a ton of friends and family who have smiled and told me that my brisket is “better than their dad’s” or “some of the best I’ve ever had”. Most seasoned cooks and chefs have told be the same thing.

    Competition is a young man’s game. They can be fun, stressful, and more work than it’s worth sometimes. A good award can really start your career off strong too. It can also give your carer a big boost as well — And props to superstar chefs (young and old) who grind it out and can perform at that level. But there’s a lot of politics, vanity, and inconsistency (as we saw in the video) that comes with these competitions and that coveted award — whatever it may be.

    A trophy will never replace the joy of nourishing and sharing a meal with those you care about. People get into this industry because they want to feed, entertain, and bring joy to their community. You don’t need a ton of bling to do that. 😎

  19. You know your the real deal when you got 1st place bbq trophies throughout your whole bbq restaurant

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