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Bragging Rights On The Line For Chicken, Beef, Pork

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Nicholas Brod of Sebring stirs Brunswick stew on Friday at the Central Florida Barbecue festival. The Brods made the stew for their friends for dinner Friday night.

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: January 13, 2008

2007 Central Florida Barbecue Festival Photo Gallery

SEBRING — Jason Gray was bragging on his fellow barbecuers Saturday afternoon.

There was a fire in his Dominizer, a water chamber cooker. The grease pan ignited, and two flashovers flamed across the 6.5 foot high ceiling.

It was moving too quickly to wait for the fire department. The entire trailer would have been involved, and the neighboring trailers would have been endangered too.

Gray, a burly caterer from Wauchula who supplies weddings and small gatherings, shouted for help twice, and within seconds two fire extinguishers appeared on the serving counter of his 24-foot trailer.

"They were just there, plop, plop," Gray said. He used up both, and yelled for another. A man handed him one.

He got the fire out within minutes, and one of the men said, "What did you have in there?"

It was the pork butt, which must be cooked overnight.

The man offered, "I've got another one over there. We'll get it out of the refrigerator. We'll have it done in four hours. I'll show you how to do it."

Gray said, "Give me a minute." He reached into the red smoker and pulled out his product. It was wrapped in aluminum foil, and yes, it was fine.

"I think I'm going to go with it," Gray said. Now we'll see if the judges like their barbecue a little crispy on the outside.

There were no injuries, and the damage to the kitchen was minimal, Gray said. Monday, it goes back for a few simple repairs to the walls.

Breakfast Of Champions

Four years ago, Jess Baldridge tried out for 12 Hours of Barbecue. He won 11th in chicken and about 16th or 18th for pork butt.

In November, he and his wife, Sara, opened LJ's BBQ & Grill on Lake Ave. in Avon Park, so he came back to help advertise their family affair, which includes their sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews as chief cooks and bottle washers.

Sara used her mother's recipes to enter the apple pie contest at 11 a.m., Jess was smoking the pork ribs over mesquite wood for noon. Mom owns Acapulco Cafe, a Mexican restaurant in Zolfo Springs.

As they traveled around the country, they saw small eateries, and said to each other, "We could do that."

Their real jobs are as corrections officers at the Avon Park Correctional Cacility, but if they take early retirements in five years, this will how they spend the rest of their lives.

High Tech

Barbecuing is getting higher tech every year. Some contestants are parking their 18-foot trailers, finished inside as kitchens, next to motor homes. Together, they cost as much as a three-bedroom lake house.

Chris Self was selling the Traeger grill, which goes for $600 to $1,000 at Triangle Hardware on U.S. 27 in south Sebring.

Turn on an auger with one switch, and hit the igniter with another, and the Trager grill feeds wood pellets the size of one-inch long pencils into a fire box. The electric element burns the pellets – the only source of heat – and they smoke like little coals. Every one to five minutes, more pellets are fed, depending on the temperature control.

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