Succulent success for Smoke, Wind and Fire BBQ competition

By Justin Seward on July 26, 2022.

Mark and Christie Shields of the Guardians of the Grill backyard/amateur team fire up their smoker with tender meat during the Smoke, Wind and Fire festival at Exhibition Park on Saturday.

Alberta Pork and Hickory Street hosted the Smoke, Wind and Fire BBQ festival for its second annual event on Saturday and Sunday at Exhibition Park.

The festival gathered barbeque enthusiasts to come and fire up their grills and compete in a Masters and amateur division to see who could cook up the best meat.

The event also allowed attendees to experience entertainment and enjoy additional events that celebrated anything barbeque.

“The people who are here, there are at least two or three that have been major winners, like in every event and even in the U.S. when they go down there,” said Darcy Fitzgerald, Alberta Pork executive director.

“So you’ve got some top-notch competitors here and they represent not just guys who have a passion for it, but they represent people who actually have made it their career and their business to be involved in barbeque.”

The biggest thing that Fitzgerald noticed this year is the competition had the backyard amateur group on the Saturday who were doing the chicken and ribs.

“We want to be a part of it, but what you’ll notice… is they’ll be gone and we’ll still be here,” he said.

“It’s nice that we haven’t put them in between because we had big empty spaces and now we’re all together, of the guys who are competitors, but we still encourage them to keep growing and maybe next year and be one of the competing teams for the Masters series.”

Practice was Fitzgerald’s response to the key to success in the competition.

“You’ve got to just practice and find those little things and hone your skill,” he said.

“Like I say, there’s some competitors here who have done that. They spend a lot of time figuring out what is just the magic formula for the recipe to cook those four meats. So, it’s ribs, chicken, pulled pork and brisket.”

The meats have to be cooked within a half hour.

The meat is brought in small boxes to the Kansas City Barbeque Society judges before a taste test is done for tenderness and flavour.

“It’s not about everything needs to taste the same. It’s about it tasted really good,” he said.

“It was pork ribs and they tasted awesome because of the sauce you use and the rub that was there and they were tender when I bit into them; they were delicious. And a lot of people cook ribs, in particular, they cook them so they fall off the bones. But in a competition they don’t fall off the bones. It’s just like a nice bite.”

Ryan Scott and his Guardians of the Grill team were a part of the amateur competition and for them the competition allows them to get to know people with similar passions.

“We’re just passionate about it,” he said.

“We’re all kind of geeks and we research and we watch a lot of videos and we just enjoy trying things out all the time. So we’re always cooking and trying to create your own flavour profile and what you enjoy. And, again, like I said, it’s mostly time with friends and learning about the barbeque community and everybody’s comraderie there.”

Arrowhead North BB won the Master Series event.

The winner of the Backyard/Amateur series was Guardians of the Grill.

For the Exhibition, the festival experience of the event was new this year.

Hudsons Taphouse had a beer garden, live demos were done on the stage and Rock 107 provided the music.

“We’re really excited to be able to gather all of these barbeque enthusiasts in Lethbridge and invite them to our city where so much agriculture and food production and processing happen,” said Mevisha Maistry, Exhibition Park’s director of communications.

Maistry said events like these help drive awareness about the partners that we have and food production and the atmosphere that we have around food culture in southern Alberta.