Page 30 - May 2021 Barbecue News Magazine

President
Kim Stanfield, kstanfield@nebs.org
Treasurer
Chris Clegg, cclegg@nebs.org Mike Strout, mstrout@nebs.org
Recording Secretary
Anissa Ladd, aladd@nebs.org
Vice President
Paul Dahlstrom, pdahlstrom@nebs.org
NEBS Board of Directors Michael Strout
Peter Kelleher Jim Morey Craig Kimberley Mike Leger Tom Ryan Mic Stanfield
679 Washington St.; Unit #8-170; South Attleboro, MA 02703 www.nebs.org
How I Won A Virtual
Barbecue Competition
These days, we are all are doing things differently due to the pandemic. Live cooking competitions have been on hold for obvious reasons. Video con- ferencing has become a way to stay connected to family, friends, and co-workers. A virtual cooking competition? I was skeptical at first, but it was a blast! I belong to the Northeast Barbecue Soci- ety (NEBS). Recently, it hosted a Chopped-style barbecue competition on Zoom.
There were seven enthusiastic teams participating in the initial Zoom meeting. They had cool team names, and I could tell some of them knew each other from competing at live events. Was I out of my league?
Each team had a day to come up with a plan for four basket ingre- dients that were revealed via email—ground turkey, cantaloupe,
By: Stephen Nestor
cornflakes, and a chocolate rabbit. The judges were introduced (four were certified Kansas City Barbecue Society judges) and they verified that the mandatory basket ingredients had not been al- tered. Teams then had 45 minutes to make an ap- petizer, entrée, or a dessert.
I recruited my wife, Karen, to help me since I didn’t think I could complete everything in the al- lotted time by myself.
Our goal was to create a Southwestern Pub Burger with a grilled cantaloupe salsa and a cantaloupe and grilled jalapeño-infused margarita. I wanted to use the basket in as many ways as possible and
put as many ingredients as I could on the grill since NEBS is a bar- becue group.
BarbecueNews.com - 30
MAY 2021