Page 36 - February 2022 Barbecue News Magazine

their discriminating palettes. When William set out to develop his seasonings, his goal for them was to have lots of flavor, ability to layer the flavors, contain a minimum amount of salt and con- tain no fillers or preservatives. While some of his seasonings, Ribeye Ranch for example, does contain salt, he tries very hard to keep the salt at a minimum to enhance flavor versus being over- powering. Let me digress for a minute. Ribeye Ranch is where William and Pam raised their family while living in Alabama and the seasoning is named after a place with very fond memories. The first time I used it on a practice steak, Gretchen made a face and said she wasn’t sure about putting ranch seasoning on a steak. Fortunately, there is no flavor connection between Ribeye Ranch seasoning and “ranch” dressing.
Test batches are shared with friends with the request for candid feedback. Friends tend to be nice – true friends offer the candid feedback needed to tune the final recipe. He tends to selectively send his trial
batches to those who will provide him the best feed- back. For example, his Fiesta seasoning went to his west Texas friends while his BBQ rubs went to his BBQ friends. The seasonings William develops are designed to please the palette with familiar flavors and not something that leave an odd or lingering taste.
William shared some additional interesting tidbits about the de- velopment process. First, the SCA Family has been very support- ive and encouraging of his efforts. As I have found myself, the collective knowledge of the SCA family is willingly shared and in- valuable. In William’s case, that knowledge saved him from mis- printing 10,000 labels. The second is to start working with your co-packer early and make your test batches using the spices they carry – not what you find in your local stores. There is a differ- ence in the taste profiles of spices and mixing up commercial batches is more complicated than just scaling up the ingredients
in the original recipe. Finally, some great advice from the Steak OG himself, Brett Gallaway, “try not to offend the judges”. Great advice since the last seasoning you add is the first seasoning the judges will taste.
William and Pam are hard at work and are just about ready to bring a new seasoning to the market. It will be an exciting flavor profile adding to the growing PitGit family of seasonings. The Mann’s are very humble people who have a strong faith. You will often find Bill leading devotionals at “Steak Church” when com- peting and shares his profits with charity. You can find PitGrit products at over 40 on-line outlets and a growing list of retail stores.
I first learned about “Steak Princess” Rylee Wright by seeing her winning smile holding her awards at various contests posted on Facebook. I was in- trigued enough to begin following her on Facebook and then order her products. She is an impressive young woman.
Rylee started competi-
tive cooking at age 11
and only 4 short years
later, at the age of 15,
has become a force to
be reckoned with on the competition circuit in both SCA steak and ancillary categories. Credit certainly goes to Rylee, but also to her parents, Russell and Karen, who have been there support- ing, cheering and offering life lessons along the way. Originally cooking KCBS backyard competition BBQ with her dad, her inter- ests really began to grow when he started to cook SCA steak and ancillary competitions. It truly is a family affair with Rylee, Karen and Russell all winning Golden Tickets to compete at the upcom- ing SCA World Championships in Ft Worth, TX. This will be their 3rd year making the trip to Fort Worth, but the first with all 3 completing. Congratulations Wright family!
Rylee’s friends encouraged her to bring her seasonings to the pub- lic. Ironically, COVID helped move the process along as people where cooking at home more and were looking for quality season- ings to improve their home-cooked meals. Credit goes to Rylee for developing her seasonings. She started with seasonings she
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FEBRUARY 2022
“Steak Princess” Rylee Wright’s seasoning collection
liked and then improved them by adjusting them to her tastes and desired flavor profile. Like William Mann, Rylee en- listed her friends and competition cooks to test the initial batches of Beauty and the Beef and Sweet Rapture. Follow- ing on the success of those two seasonings came Cajun Firefly Dust and Fiesta Seasoning.
“Steak Princess” Rylee Wright