Rock'n Brews and BBQ

Matt Hanson had dreams of going to culinary school but they never materialized. Instead he went to law school and became a criminal defense attorney, but his zeal for cooking never subsided.

For years he honed his grill skills in his backyard, spending nearly a decade refining his low and slow technique for smoked meats before he partnered with his wife, Amanda, and his brother David to try his hand at competitive barbecue.

While Matt dreamed of attending culinary school, David actually did and while David’s culinary background is a nice complement to the team, barbecue is its own art form.

The Hansons — competing under the name Crooked Pigs as a wink to Matt’s passion and his profession — “finally got up the gumption” and entered in and won a cooking competition in Nampa three years ago. That win qualified them for the 2014 World Food Championships in Las Vegas.

“That’s what got us into competing,” Matt said.

Since then they’ve competed in numerous competitions throughout the North and Southwest and have been featured on the Travel Channel.

Competitive barbecue is “something that takes a lot of work to perfect,” Matt said. “It’s a whole different animal than barbecuing in your backyard.

“You want to come up with that ‘one-bite’ barbecue taste that will grab the judge’s attention and get high scores.”

Part of Crooked Pigs’ secret is that they use a mixture of charcoal, wood-fed and pellet-driven grills depending on what category of meat they’re cooking. Conversely, many teams will cook all their meats on a single, large grill.

“Our style is to use several smaller grills,” Matt said. “That way we can tailor our heat or smoke.”

Matt urges anyone who thinks they might be interested in competitive barbecuing to check out the Rock’n Brews and BBQ Festival to get a sense of what it’s all about.

“The sport appeals to all kinds of people, and the (barbecue) community can’t be beat,” he said. “It’s something you can’t find any other place.”

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Phil McGrane’s education includes more than his impressive academic achievements – a law degree and a Master of Public Administration – it also includes the finer points of barbecue.

The Boise man first caught the barbecue bug, while he spent a year in Alabama serving in the AmeriCorps. After that he also spent a summer in Washington, D.C., where barbecue was both ubiquitous and delicious.

McGrane, better known for his day job as chief deputy county clerk in Ada County, tackled barbecue with the same studious approach that propelled him through school. In just six years of competing, he and his partner and father-in-law Lou Johnson of Monument, Colo., have ascended the pit master ranks, placing third in the nation for pork at the 2013 Sam’s Club National Championships and 18th overall.

McGrane said his barbecue education and success have come “very incrementally.” Unable to shake the taste of southern barbecue from his memory, several years ago he set about building his own hybrid vertical smoker from raw steel. A self-proclaimed tinkerer, it took him about a year to construct.

The first time he used the smoker was also his very first competition in Pueblo, Colo. He elected to start his competitive career in Colorado because that’s where Johnson lives and if nothing else, it was a good excuse for a family outing. Johnson became part of the team in large part because he had tent trailer they could use as their command center.

Before long, they started to do well.

No matter how well they do – and they do better than most – traveling to competitions serves as a bonding experience, not just as a family but as part of the greater barbecue culture.

“It’s just a great community,” McGrane said. “It’s fun to compete and it’s great food.”

And while many people don’t equate the Gem State with great barbecue, Phil and Lou are winning hearts and minds one bite at a time. He also wants to help educate Idahoans about barbecue.

“Idaho raises some of the best beef in the county,” McGrane said. “Hopefully we can enlighten the locals about that quality beef and how good it tastes when it’s slow smoked.”

John Hunt earned his competitive barbecue bona fides when he lived in Kansas, where “there’s a barbecue competition on every corner.”

He got the urge to begin competing in the late 1990s when he attended the American Royal, which serves as the championship for the World Series of Barbecue.

“I paid 10 bucks to walk in and I was thinking I was going to get some great barbecue but all you get to do is go around and smell,” Hunt said.

No matter, he was hooked.

The experience inspired Hunt to become a Kansas City Barbeque Society-certified judge and later a master judge. In 1999, he started competing. From there, he became a KCBS representative, helping to oversee contests and make sure the competitors and judges were up to snuff.

Hunt got out of competitive barbecue for a while but was roped back into it when he moved to Oregon and began helping organize a KCBS-sanctioned competition in Coos Bay. He’s been involved with that event for five years.

It was through that competition that he met his teammate Darrell Shoemaker of Grants Pass, Ore. The men, both 74, got on well and Hunt liked the way Shoemaker cooked so he said “why don’t we cook together sometime.”

Shoemaker’s team was Rogue Caveman and Hunt’s was Smokin’ Nations, thus was the start of Rogue Nations. The Rockin’ Brews and BBQ Festival will be their second competition together.

There was a time when Hunt would take part in as many as 15 barbecue competitions a year, but that was when he was in Kansas and was 15 years younger. These days it’s more like four or five.

“It’s a very expensive hobby,” he said. “A lot of cooks will tell you they spend at least $1,000 to compete for a weekend.”

But when the smoke starts rolling off the grills, it still brings a smile to Hunt’s face.

“My first time (at a competition) all I got to do was smell, but that encouraged me enough to get started.

“Once you do your first competition, you’re hooked, like cocaine. You want to keep going back so you can improve and gain experience, and, hopefully, get your name called during the awards ceremony.”

Chris Morrison’s love for barbecue is hereditary.

His father was an east Texas native who passed on his love of slow-smoked meats to his son.

“I got the bug from him,” Chris said.

But living in Boise, he could never find a restaurant that could replicate the flavors he grew up with, so Chris started cooking his own barbecue.

Eventually Chris learned about the Kansas City Barbeque Society and was trained as a KCBS judge before he ventured into the arena as a competitor.

He started small at first, competing in local events such as the Idaho Army National Guard’s Pig Gig, in which every team had to have at least one military member, before taking his game on the road around the state as well as into Utah and Nevada.

True Boise State University football fans, Chris and his wife Melony and daughter Connor named their team True Blue BBQ in homage to the Broncos. They even have a blue and orange smoker.

“We get some looks when we go down to Utah,” he said, laughing.

And, just like their inspiration, they like to give the big boys a run for their money. Last month, they competed in the Wild West BBQ Shootout in Wendover, Nev.

“I never really thought I was a competitive person until I got into competitive barbecue,” he said.

Chris said he makes a point of competing in KCBS-sanctioned events such as the Wild West BBQ Shootout and the Rock’N Brews & BBQ Festival because the KCBS is the biggest barbecue-sanctioning organization in the nation and because winners of state championship competitions qualify for the Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue held in Lynchburg, Tenn.

But even though they’re competing the barbecuers are well known for sharing pointers and helping each other out.

“There’s a lot of camaraderie,” he said. “We all get along well.”

Chris looks forward to the Rock’n Brews & BBQ Festival so that Idaho teams can show teams from other states just how good the competitors here are.

“I think it’s awesome,” he said. “I can’t wait. It’s drawing a lot of teams from a lot of other states to really help support what we’ve got going here.”