ProfessorSalt.com

Competition BBQ ribs from The Rub Company

You've got two ways to get your BBQ on this weekend. Fountain Valley hosts their second annual rib burn, and Westminster holds their inaugural sanctioned barbecue competition. At either event, you'll have a chance to walk among the cooks and sample their smoked meats.

The real-deal contest at the Westminster Mall is called the Ribs, Pigs, and Watermelons Pro BBQ Competition. It's a fundraiser for American Family Housing, a nonprofit that helps the homeless. There will be carnival games, bands and the Lakers Girls.

The OC BBQ Bonanza is the rib burn that takes place at the Fountain Valley Sports Complex on Brookhurst & Heil. This is a for-profit food festival organized by the folks that put on the Long Beach Lobster Festival and Tustin Chili Cookoff. No Lakers Girls are expected at this one.

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Meranda Carter/OC Weekly

Last year's winner, Andrew Gruel of Slapfish

As we ease into summertime, everyone finds a excuse reason to gather. Our lineup includes two BBQ, one luxe lonchera, and Placentia's answer to Top Chef. If your schedule allows, check one out.

Friday - Bistango's "Great American Grill-Off"

To kick-off the weekend, this business lunch mainstay is throwing a party on the patio (they have a patio?). Complete with swimsuit fashion show, comped appetizers and live music, patrons will watch five amateur grillers compete for a $1,000 gift card at either Kimera, Bistango or Bayside. The festivities begin at 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.bistango.com.
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ProfessorSalt.com

Eat competition-grade ribs and you too can be THIS happy

Orange County's longest-running and best-attended barbecue contest returns to the Fairgrounds this Saturday June 9, and Sunday June 10. I have participated as either a cook or a judge in every edition since 2007, and I'm proud to see this home-grown event expand each year. Close to 70 teams from all over the West Coast compete in the Kansas City BBQ Society-sanctioned contest, which sets a record for the largest ever organized in California.

This year, the event is a two-day affair. This event was among the first to embrace the People's Choice vote, which allows the public to sample meats from the competitors. These days, most true BBQ contests in Southern California offer the public a chance to vote for their favorite team. Five years ago, sanctioned contests tended to be closed off to the public, and you weren't able to ask teams for food because organizers didn't want to hassle with Health Department requirements to feed the public.

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Hold the pickles!

​The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit weighed in today in the case of a sheriff's deputy who claims severe emotional trauma after two ex-cons working the drive-thru at a Burger King added an extra ingredient during his late-night burger break.

Suspecting the fast-food employees were ex-cons, Washington state Deputy Edward J. Bylsma pulled off the road, removed the burger bun to his Whopper and found a "slimy" white glob of phlegm atop the meat patty.

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ProfessorSalt.com

BBQ judges at the Dana Point BBQ Championships

​The last time we talked BBQ for the New Year's Eve contest at Knott's Splash Mountain, I promised you an inside view of the judges' tent of a sanctioned barbecue contest. This week: a video and a discussion of how competition barbecue is scored, plus information on where you can become a certified barbecue judge in Southern California next month!

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ProfessorSalt.com

Competition-grade spare ribs from Tropical Heat BBQ Team

​Would you guess that Orange County hosts more sanctioned barbecue contests than L.A. County? It's true. We're not talking about unsanctioned "rib burns," either, but legitimate contests with certified judges like you'd find in Kansas City.

To conclude the contest season, the world of competition barbecue dukes it out for a $15,000 purse on December 31 and January 1 at Knott's Soak City in Buena Park.

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Flickr user fritish

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Thanksgiving turkey is one of those traditions you don't mess with - somebody in your family will cut you out of their will if you change the way you cook it. They'll expect the same, oven-roasted bird that's been the done the exact same way in your family since they landed on the Mayflower. But why not buck tradition with a second turkey, cooked outside on the smoker? Here's some ideas for those iconoclasts.

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Photo by Gary Walkup

​You may not know it, but Bigmista's Barbecue is kind of a big deal. Listed on Jonathan Gold's 99 Things to Eat Before You Die 2010, the barbecue competitor-turned-caterer sells at farmers' markets across far-flung parts of LA. It has been geographically inconvenient for us behind the Orange Curtain, but it announced yesterday the company will start vending this Sunday at Long Beach's Old McDonald's Certified Farmers Market. The relatively new, weekly farmers' market is on Spring and Clark from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

That market is just a short distance from Long Beach Airport, which means you can torture your Jet Blue aisle-mates with the smoky aromas of barbecue brisket while they're snacking on little bags of complimentary blue potato chips and secretly hating you.

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ProfessorSalt.com

Beef brisket from Los Alamitos team Inhale BBQ

​Last Friday and Saturday, September 23 - 24, fifty BBQ teams from across the Western states took over the lush lawns of Sea Terrace Park for the inaugural Dana Point BBQ Championship. Top teams featured on TLC's BBQ Pitmasters show such as Big Poppa Smokers, Slap Yo Daddy BBQ and Four Q BBQ lined up with some of the toughest competitors in California for $10,000 in prize money.

Click here to see the photo slide show!

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Courtesy Big Poppa Smokers

​The world of contest barbecue is a tight-knit community full of friends that compete fiercely against each other. Last year, I had the chance to meet and compete against Johnny Trigg, the "Godfather of BBQ," and the crew from Big Poppa Smokers on the set of TLC's BBQ Pitmasters Season 2. Though the TV show gave the impression that competitors don't like each other, we're really brothers in smoke.

Big Poppa sells nothing but top-notch, made-in-USA smokers and grills. Johnny Trigg makes the most beautiful competition spare ribs I've had the honor of tasting. Together, they're giving backyard cooks and established BBQ teams the chance to learn the art of competition BBQ from a legend.

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