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| We'd love to meet you! Look for "The BBQ Guy" at Kansas City Barbecue Society competitions in 2006 throughout the midwest.
"The BBQ Guy Cooking Team" includes:
The BBQ Guy is a personal bbq chef, bbq contest competitor, bbq entrepreneur, and online publisher.
The BBQ Guy Story: Although he wasn’t a born Southerner, during the eight years he lived in Tennessee, Brian Pearcy developed an affinity for southern food and culture. He married one of the last remaining southern-belles who actually grew up on a family-owned farm—Linda. Linda loved barbecue pork almost as much as Brian. What more would you expect from a "pig farmer's daughter"? Brian never refused an offer to learn something new and when Linda suggested he learn to cook barbecue instead of paying others for it, he jumped at the suggestion. With Linda’s blessing he purchased an inexpensive smoker and Sunday afternoons were spent fine tuning the barbecue method, until on the third or fourth attempt, Brian achieved the goal of bon-a-fide Southern-style tender and juicy pulled pork with "bark". Become a Virtual BBQ Contest Competitor Do you watch the Food Network’s coverage of barbecue contests and wish you could get involved? Have you always wanted to form a competitive bbq cooking team, but don’t have the free time to get started? Are you an accomplished bbq cook, but are short on the funds to start your own bbq team? Would you like to learn to how bbq contest cooks prepare contest entries and read their recipes, including step-by-step directions? TheBBQGuy.com Cooking Team is adding new feature to our competition bbq team this year—virtual bbq contest participation. You too can participate in bbq cook-offs—through the power of the Internet. Linda and I invite you to become a member of our virtual barbecue team. Compared to forming an actual competitive cooking team, it’s a real bargain. Our main goal with this virtual BBQ contest program is to teach you more about the life of a professional bbq contest competitor, the good and the bad; and to have a lot of fun in the process. If you decide to participate in our "Virtual BBQ" contest opportunity here’s what you receive:
Click here to become an “virtual” team member of TheBBQGuy.com Cooking Team. Practice, Practice, Practice
We have mapped out a strategy for our practice cooks this year. Usually I just practice whatever I feel like eating, with no purpose or plan behind it, but this year I have made a schedule and know what I'm cooking for every practice session. It's kind of like a NASCAR team preparing their car before they get to the racetrack. I had a basketball coach who doubled as the Algebra teacher in high school and his favorite saying was, "Perfect practice, makes perfect performance, but poor practice makes for a poor performance." He's been right up to now and I suspect bbq is no different.
I've recently added a new bbq blog entry that is accessible via The BBQ Blog
BBQ Team Names
I've spent some time thinking about this lately and without even trying hard I've come up with 40+ team names that start with the name "Big" and another 18 that start with the word "Beer" or have "beer" in their name.
Do teams that choose to promote their preference for beer in their team name drink a lot of beer when competing? Do they barbecue for the fun of it, or are they serious about winning? Do they all own liquor stores, or do some work for beer distributors?
Are teams named "big" comprised of "big" people? Are their egos bigger than the average team, or do they just have "big" BBQ ambitions?
There are at least 100 teams that have the word "smokin" in their team name and at least another 150 bbq teams with the word "smoke" or some other variation of the word "smoke" in their team name. Close to 450 teams have the abbreviation "BBQ" in their name.
The BBQ process creates a lot of "smoke", so I guess that is an obvious connection and I'll bet most of them actually use a "smoker" to cook with whether it's a log burner, water smoker, pellet smoker, cooker, oven, rotisserie, upright, or any of the other popular marketing terms used to describe the tools used for creating the samples for turn-in. The prevalence of "BBQ" makes sense because it certainly fits better on a team banner or sign than "Barbecue", "Barbeque", or "Bar-B-Que"; and there's never a question of how to spell it.
There are at least 6 with a "dot com" (.com) in their team name that most likely have their own web sites about their cooking business or hobby; and 16 more have the word "guy" in their name. Do the teams with "guys" allow females to cook with them? Are they at the bbq contest to get away from their wives? Did their wives kick them out of the house for the weekend? Or, are they just being humble and are partial to generic descriptions?
There's about 80 with the word "grill" in their name.
Do these teams "grill" their briskets, ribs, and pork butts during contests, or just their chicken? Do they really use a "grill" for competition? Do they all even own a "grill", and by the way is it gas, electric, or charcoal fired?
These are just some of things I think about when "I'm wishin' I were cookin" and it's snowing and raining outside just enough to make firing up the cookers a miserable proposition on a Saturday afternoon.
Signed,
"The BBQ Guy"
(just a humble-run of the mill- ordinary- average-middle-aged-mid-western redneck)
I received a flyer in the mail announcing the early bird registration for "The Great American Barbecue". Contest features a $10,000 grand prize and $6,000 reserve grand prize. Contestants who register prior to 12/31/05 will receive a $25 discount on the standard $175 entry fee. Each of the four traditional bbq meat categories--chicken, ribs, pork and brisket--pay $1,200 to the winner. Prize money like that is going to bring in a whole heap of contestants from all-across the country.
The contest is scheduled for May 25 - 27, 2006 and will be held at the Woodlands in Kansas City, KS. Besides the traditional KCBS categories, the contest will also feature dessert and side dish entries that pay $750 to the winner. The flyer also included information suggesting that organizers are working on putting together a Kid's Que and a Grilling Contest.
In addition to the entry fee securing the team cooking space, there are additional charges for electricity, ice, wristbands, commemorative pins, side dish contest entry, and an entertainment pass.
If I lived a little closer to Kansas City, I would surely send in my entry fee tomorrow.
History of TheBBQGuy.com contest cooking effort:
My wife Linda and I compete in barbecue contests sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society and Florida Barbecue Association.
To assist with funding our competitive cooking efforts, we also market our own original recipe barbecue rub at cook-offs and via our web site about barbecue.
If you or someone you know also markets a barbecue product and you would like to form a cooperative effort to help both of us potentially increase sales, please contact me at thebbqguy@yahoo.com to discuss it further.
To explain a little more about what I have in mind....
For example, if you have a barbecue sauce (or other barbecue product) to sell and would like to 'trade' me for an equal dollar amount of my original spice rub, I believe we could mutually benefit from this type of arrangement.
Companies like Home Depot, Eddie Bauer, Wrangler, and Wal-Mart have proven that "cooperation" of this type is mutually beneficial and have been doing it for years.
Again, if you have a barbecue or other product that might fit this mold, please contact me. I look forward to hearing from you.
BBQ Awards Earned by TheBBQGuy.com
Reserve Grand Champion - Cabela's Foremost Bar-be-que Challenge
Contest Opportunities To help offset the cost of competing, my wife and I looked for opportunities that would compliment our BBQ efforts. We sell Watkins products to help offset some competition expenses. We've had some pretty good success with the Watkins Barbecue Sauce in competition. To purchase Watkins' products, click the "Watkins" banner above to visit our online store front. If you would like to try some Watkins products, contact me and I will gladly send you some samples.
A word about competing: Remember to Have Fun
We’ve met a lot of nice people at BBQ contests. It’s a competition, but we try to focus on having fun. Not everyone can win every contest. Sometimes you have an “off” day and sometimes you might go several contests with nothing but middle-of-the pack finishes. We’ve collected our share of trophies and honors, but we don’t compete to make money—we do it for the fun of it—and let winning take care of itself.
BBQ contests are usually focused on raising funding for a worthy charity, special event, or group. When competing, we have found it valuable to remember this above else—we’re contributing our time and efforts to benefit others. We recommend you take the same approach and feel that you’ll find the experience much more fulfilling.
Contest Budget
We hate to bring it up, but your decision to get started in BBQ competitions will be largely affected by the start-up expenses. These expenses can be minimized with careful planning, but starting with a limited budget, like we did, can be challenging. We spent about $1,400 on the equipment and supplies before we even bought the meat for our first contest. We also helped another cooking team for a few competitions to learn what supplies were absolutely necessary and which ones we could live without.
Some “must have” items you will need:
Cooker(s)
Some “nice to have” items:
Two-way radios
You'll also need to decide how much meat to purchase, where to find the meat you'll be using, whether buy whole briskets or flats, whether you will cook breasts, thighs, or drumsticks, whether you prefer shoulders or butts and, lastly, spare ribs or baby back/loin backs.
All of these questions have pro's and con's. That's where your personal preferences, experiences, budget and what type of cooker you'll be using will come into play. And of course, answers to these questions will depend on what you think will win consistently.
Before we decided to begin competing we visited some contests and helped another team to get an idea of the commitment involved.
Do you have a BBQ product for sale? |
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