State BBQ Championship Cookoff

Last Saturday I ate like a pig, or I mean, I ate pig.  Well almost, it was like a buffet that would never end.   We ate for almost 2 hours sampling 25 freshly cooked pork barb-b-que. 

I was one of five celebrity judges at the State BBQ Championship cook-off on Saturday at the State Fairgrounds.  The other judges were: Cookbook Author Fran McCollough, Ken Smith from WRAL, 94.7 Air Personality Billy Dukes, and John Adams (not pictured) who has worked with pork most of his life.  I remember judging the State BBQ Championship once before in the early 1990s; but I don’t think I ate as much as I did Saturday.  As the “blind” taste testers, we were 50% of the score.  The other 50% of the score came from the on-site judges;  all of whom have been certified by the pork association. 

We got sequestered inside the Red Cross building at the Fairgrounds and at 8:30 am, the pork started coming in.  All 25 contestants were winners at regional events.  They had to prepare a container of their pork that was labeled only by letter.

We each judged on look, 25%; texture and tenderness 25%; and taste, 50%.  It was amazing how the barb-b-que had different subtle qualities that set it apart from each other. 

We spent almost two hours tasting the pork.  I tried to take only small samples but boy was it good.  I was suprised that none of the entries was overly spicy or smoky.  I just kept eating and eating and eating.

Needless to say I didn’t anything the rest of the day until I had a salad at dinner, no meat!

I just found out today that the winner, Joe Peterson, was first in our blind taste test and first with the real judges outside.  Here is a picture of the winner and his pig before we got to it.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.

Powered by Wordpress | WP Premium theme by WP Remix
Copyright 2007. On The RehDAR. All rights reserved

• Subscribe to RSS
• Home
• About Bill