Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
David Kohn reports from the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.
Jul 3, 1998 | Take a drive around Memphis, and you'll see barbecue cookers everywhere -- on porches, in yards, under carports, on the terraces of housing projects. Not those spindly Webers made for cooking up a few burgers, but big cylindrical contraptions, sturdy enough to cook a 130-pound hog for the necessary 24 hours.
Which explains, more or less, how I found myself in this humid city, in a treeless field on the banks of the Mississippi River, surrounded by groups of well-nourished men using all manner of equipment -- 500-gallon propane tanks, converted oil drums and gigantic rotisserie ovens -- to gently cook several tons of pork. I was in the midst of, as one participant called it, "the big 'un": the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.
That night when I undressed, my clothes, down to my underwear and socks, were fragrant with this smoky smell. It had been a good day. I had eaten three heaping barbecue sandwiches, a plate of ribs and several large helpings of baked beans flavored with chunks of pork fat.
How had I -- a Northerner, a Jew and a sometime vegetarian -- ended up here? Eight years ago, as a newly minted college graduate, I applied for 50 newspaper jobs. I was turned down by all but one, the Anniston Star in Alabama. To my surprise, I ended up staying in Alabama for two strange, enjoyable years. There I discovered barbecued pork.
For those who don't know, barbecued pork is to the South what the bagel is to New York. And just as Southerners have no idea how to make an edible bagel, Northerners have no clue how to cook barbecue. So my fiancie and I left Brooklyn to make a weekend pilgrimage to Memphis, she to visit friends and see the city, me to eat as much barbecue as possible.
What is it about the taste of pork barbecue that I find so irresistible? It has to do with the cooking itself, because I don't even like pork prepared any other way. There's something about the way barbecued pig just melts off the bone, about the juxtaposition between the meat's almost buttery tenderness, and its heft, its substantiality. Done correctly, the smoky flavor harmonizes perfectly with the sweetness of the meat and the spiciness of the sauce. In the end, though, who knows? It's ineffable.
Every May since 1978, Memphis has hosted the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Equal parts sport, culinary seminar, frat party and beauty pageant, it is the most prestigious pork barbecue competition in the world (Kansas City, another barbecue stronghold, holds the preeminent beef event). For 21 years, competitors have gathered on the banks of the Mississippi, in Tom Lee Park just a few blocks from downtown Memphis, to see who can cook the best rib, shoulder and hog.
What was once a low-key get-together has, over the years, become a much larger event. That first year, 20 teams battled it out; this year the number was 227. Tens of thousands of spectators now pay $6 apiece simply to soak in the ambiance (competitors' barbecue isn't for sale, and the public must settle for vendors' fare). At stake is a lot of money, this year almost $40,000 in cash prizes. The overall champion takes home $10,000, while top finishers receive as much as $5,000. And winners can expect to reap endorsement deals with meat suppliers and charcoal makers.
To ensure fairness, the contest has organized a complex grading system that uses 450 volunteer judges; each of these palates has been educated at an eight-hour seminar on rating barbecued pork. To increase its profile and encourage participation, Memphis in May has even set up a series of satellite barbecue contests all over the South, 55 in all.
Preparation is elaborate. Each team is given a patch of land where it sets up a booth in which to cook, throw parties, relax, sleep and, most important, present its work to the judges. These rigs, as they are called, can be lavish; some have running water, electric fans, built-in cookers and second-floor terraces. It's not uncommon for a team to spend $40,000 or more just putting one together.
When I first arrived, I was, to be honest, disappointed by the magnitude of it all. Memphis in May was clearly no down-home event. Corporate sponsors, including Reynolds and Piggly Wiggly (a southern supermarket chain), had set up promotional trailers. The sponsoring radio station, Froggy 94, had a large tent topped with a giant leering inflated frog, and their sound system blared Top 40. A bungee-jumping concession had set up shop in the center of the park, charging leapers $25 a pop (by Saturday, the price would double). Memphis in May, it appeared, was nothing more than a corporate-sponsored barbecue-flavored street fair.
But as I roamed the park talking to people, I came to realize that underneath this merchandised surface lay something meatier. The contestants, and their contest, occupied a kind of parallel universe outside the domain of Froggy 94 -- a place devoted to the ideal of the perfectly cooked pig. For them, Memphis in May isn't really about money -- even championship squads end up spending more than they win. For many in Tom Lee Park, Memphis in May, and barbecue in general, is an obsession. As one cook told me: "Once you get into the sweet taste of that pork meat, the sauces and everything, it gets better and better as you learn more and more about it."
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