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They came from across the state and beyond, 22 teams of men and women wanting to show they cook the best pig at the Garden City Bar-B-Q Cook-Off.
In the end, the winner was Taste of Wando (S.C.), which featured Roscoe Kellahan working over a cooker embossed with the silver ladies of mud flap fame, who was trying a new recipe for pork barbecue for the very first time.
Before he won the contest, he fretted maybe he should have stayed with the old sauce. This time he added more ketchup and more vinegar.
“I should have stayed with the tried and true,” he said as he leaned over the hog’s skin, which had three different piles of pork. One was flavored with his regular sauce, another with the contest sauce, the final one with a hard vinegar sauce he said would mellow after a couple hours on the heat.
The Garden City Bar-B-Q Cook-Off held at Orangeburg Mall this weekend was the first in what organizers hope will become an annual event. It was overseen by the S.C. Barbecue Association, which is developing a group of judges it believes can choose the best of the state’s barbecue without showing preference for any of the state’s four regional types of barbecue.
The contestants began the contest Friday night with an “Anything But Pork” competition. After they were done cooking foods like catfish stew and grilled tuna, they prepared for the main event — pork barbecue.
“It was kind of cold. I guess it got down to 32 degrees,” said Roger Heaton of Orangeburg, who was part of the Southern Cookers team, which had previously taken a second in the Carolina Q Cup. In the barbecue pit, they call Heaton “Bubba the Pit Boss.” At his day job with the State Law Enforcement Division, they call him captain.
He says the barbecue judges are looking for meat to have a good look, a good texture and “something significant.”
“We try to hit ’em with hot, sweet and sour,” Heaton said. They use brown sugar for the sweet, apple cider vinegar for the sour and a blend of peppers for the hot.
His group didn’t use any sauce on the barbecue, using a rub instead and injecting the flavor into the meat. They used hickory wood for cooking, because “it seems to be well-received in this area.”
Among the contestants, there was general agreement that the night was a little cold, but the camaraderie made the event worth it. The person with the most heat had the most friends, they said.
John Wilson’s team, the Cook-Tenders, didn’t bring an R.V. or camper like many of the others. Instead, some slept in chairs, some stayed up all night. They all kept warm by a tall fuel oil burner used to keep peach trees warm during cold weather.
“It keeps the peaches warm — last night, it kept us warm,” Wilson said.
The Cook-Tenders of Swansea won a second in the competition, which was their first competition.
Timmy Barr of Springfield was out as part of the Barr’s Farm team under his daddy, 80-year-old “Bo Peep” Barr, “who just loves to cook.” They compete regularly, but they hope to hit the road more once Timmy retires in three years.
Timmy said his daddy has two different types of barbecue. He didn’t use his regular sauce for the contest because the judges seem to prefer vinegar sauces, he said. Bo Peep’s vinegar sauce includes orange juice, lemon juice, Texas Pete hot sauce, red pepper and salt.
Timmy added, laughing, “I can’t tell everything that’s in it.”
“Most people cook that type for the competition,” Timmy said. “I like his regular — his sauce has won some competitions.”
The competition is about meeting friends, talking into the night and tradition.
Kellahan shared quarters for the cold night with Pete Price of Confederate Cookers of Andrews, S.C. Price won first place in gas cooking and second place in wood cooking in the Carolina Q Cup in 2004, and placed first in wood cooking in the Q Cup in 2005.
They met at a barbecue competition and have been friends since.
But during the contest, “We don’t speak to each other from 10 (p.m.) to 15 minutes after 10 (a.m.),” Kellahan said, joking.
Price cooked his first hog when he was 8 years old in a hole in his backyard. He then moved up to concrete blocks, and from there to a metal cooker. He still thinks cooking a hog in the ground over wood makes the best barbecue — he’s totally opposed to the flavors of charcoal and liquid smoke.
The contest drew 42 judges trained by the barbecue association. Each sampled four or five plates of the barbecue using a blind judging method, so they didn’t know whose barbecue they were eating. The winners were judged on a point system that takes into account appearance, aroma, tenderness and texture, taste and overall impression.
While the contestants waited outside, three association members hunched over a computer in the Cinema, entering the scores.
The scores will be added to a tally of the best contest results over the course of a year to decide the best barbecue chef in the state, in a method similar to that used in NASCAR. As the association’s first point contest of the year, the Garden City Cook-Off drew cookers who wanted to begin the year early.
The winners of the “Anything But Pork” contest were: first place, In the Trunk, $200 prize; second, The Bank Smoker, $100 prize; third, Alveron Cookers.
The winners of the main contest were: first, Taste of Wando, $1,000 prize; second, Cook-Tenders, $500 prize; third, Marry Oak Barbecue, $250; fourth, Squealers; fifth, Q-2-U.
After the contest, the 2,800 pounds of cooked meat were collected. It was sold to raise money for Jason Wayne Starnes, who has acute myeloid leukemia, and the Shriner’s hospital.
Salvation Army Capt. Phillip Priest, who stopped by for a plate for the barbecue, said “It was good — it could have used more sauce.”
He didn’t have much barbecue growing up in Virginia. Then he moved to North Carolina, but he wasn’t a big fan of the vinegar-based stuff they serve there.
Now he’s in Orangeburg and his favorite barbecue “is mustard by far. Vinegar-based is just terrible.”
Organizers and the association said the event was successful, especially for a first-time event.
“We’re definitely going to do it again about the same time” next year, said Mikey Bozard, one of the organizers.
Lake High, one of the founders of the barbecue association, said “This was great for a first one.” And it will get bigger.
“Next year, they’ll probably have 30 or more in this thing,” he said.