Two Days In Texas

Even though there were 13 KCBS sanctioned cook-offs being held the weekend of September 25-26, 2009, I elected not to compete in any of them so I could attend a BBQ Cooking Class with The Baron of BBQ, Chef Paul Kirk.

Traveling the 475+ miles to McKinney, Texas on Friday I wondered if it was even possible to learn a fraction of what Chef Paul knew about the art of BBQing in just two short days. Paul Kirk has won a BBQ award for each mile I drove to attend his class, so the odds were in my favor that I would learn a lot about BBQ.

Friday night, our hosts Sue and Brad Sparr served up a wonderful dinner as 12 class members enjoyed bouncing questions, ideas and the like off the Chef. During the evening it became clear to me that things I'd played around with and experimented with were on the right track but needed a little more tweaking.  It was truly gratifying to discover that.

To make a long story short, the main crux of the weekend was this when it comes to BBQ: Do what works for you. That's pretty much the nucleus of Chef Paul Kirk's philosophy and he's right. I once saw a DVD on BBQ competitions and how they function. Chef Paul happened to be one of 12-15 BBQ experts on this video. He said in a nutshell, cook the way you would cook for you or your family and let the chips fall where they may. Chef Paul's advice is dead-on and here's why. Anyone who has attended a cook-off knows there can 50-200+ judges tasting everyone's entries and scoring them on appearance, taste and tenderness. There is no way your BBQ is going to hone in on that many pallets. Your odds of winning the Powerball are better than that.

He and I had a conversation Saturday during a break in which we discussed principles in BBQ. Chef Paul will not use aluminum foil to cook his meat in; he calls it the Texas Crutch. He told me that his friends would say, "but Paul that's what's winning." Chef Paul said he didn't care because he would not betray his principles. I told the Chef I felt that way with chicken at competition because I do half-chickens and the rest of the KCBS crowd does thighs. I told him that I didn't care if it hair-lipped the Governor, I was going to stick with half-chickens for the same reason: Principle! Simply put, to me half-chickens just means real BBQ and that's what competitions should be about versus the latest craze or some trick-in-the-book notion.

Of the 12 people who took Chef Paul's class, to my knowledge I was the only one there who had competed in a KCBS cook-off and I had lost sight of that simple low and slow rule. It's easy to do so because of the number of BBQ cookbooks on the shelves, the never ending cooking shows on TV and the advice people on the competition circuit pass on to you. Now I'm not saying you can't learn something new to adapt to your cooking technique, but just imagine how long it would've taken Henry Ford to get the first car off the assembly line if he'd tried to make his cars to fit everyone's tastes; we'd still be on horseback.

The Chef was a great guy to learn from. He knew more jokes that anybody I'd ever met and the man is genuine. If you ever get the opportunity to take his cooking class, do so. It's money well spent.