Remember friends. Tonight at 8PM EST is when the floodgates open for this year’s Sam’s Club National Tour BBQ Contests. Make sure you visit the site below. Please share via FB or twitter!

http://www.kcbs.us/samstour/index.php

Now go and enter and tell us where you’re confirmed to cook in this tour!

Were you all hoping to get on the next season of Destination America’s BBQ Pitmasters? Yeah us too.  See the press release below for your chance.

We’re looking for the best and brightest Pitmasters who’ve got the drive to compete and personalities that trump the competition!

*DEADLINE FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS IS JANUARY 25th, 2013

Destination America’s hit show ”BBQ Pitmasters” is back for another Season!

Now Casting BBQ Pitmaster Teams of Two who cook, eat and breathe BBQ and are ready to showcase their abilities and prove they’re the BEST!

Interested applications should send the following information to

Please make sure to include your team name in the subject of your email. – Names (Must be an existing team of two)

-  Contact Info – email, cell phone and address

-  Recent Photos of the team and your food

BBQPitmasters@OriginalMedia.com

- Bios – What do you do for a living? How did you get into BBQ? How long have you been competing? What kind of pit do you cook on? What do you cook with? What’re your specialties? What awards have you won at competitions in the past? (Please list all achievements and dates won)

- Why should your team be chosen to compete??- Any links to your website and/or video footage you have of your team

*Interested applicants must put together a 3-5 minute video submission for review. Please showcase your personality, your desire to win and your incredible BBQ skills in the video. Prove to us that you have a shot at being and beating the best of the best in BBQ! Be creative and sell us on why you and your team should be on the show. Email video links and answers to the questions above to BBQPitmasters@originalmedia.com and Send any video/materials to

Original Media?C/O BBQ Pitmasters 175 Varick St, 7th Floor New York, NY 10014

(Don’t worry – we’re not expecting videos of Hollywood production quality, but comedy helps! More than anything – the cooks’ personalities are what matters.)

BBQ Pitmasters Season 4 started off this season on December 16th in Bedford Texas.  Returning to the judges’ seat for this season were Myron Mixon, Tuffy Stone and Aaron Franklin.

Meet the Competitiors:

Harold “Buzzie” Hughes chief cook of Buzzie’s BBQ Restaurant – Kerrville, Texas

Ernest Servantes chief cook of Burnt Bean Co. – New Braunfels, Texas

Will Fleischman chief cook of Lockhart Smokehouse – Dallas, Texas

Subject Meats:

Beef Brisket

Cowboy Steak

This season BBQ Pitmasters takes a different approach to the competitions that are being held.  They’re taking us to different regions of BBQ and emphasizing on meats and the way they’re cooked in those specific regions.  This approach to the competition is interesting in that we now have a whole show dedicated to a specific style or 2 from these areas.  Judge Aaron Franklin really shined in this episode since his BBQ Restaurant, Franklin BBQ, is in Austin Texas and specializes in brisket in particular.

This season again brings us the meats from one of the top sources that is Snake River Farms (SRF).  SRF is widely known in the BBQ world for their Waygu Beef and is highly used in competition BBQ.  Lately there have been other meat suppliers burning up the charts on the competition circuit such as Creekstone Farms.

Before we go into details about how we think each contestant did, I’d like to visit the smokers being used!  Harold “Buzzie” Hughes used a custom wood burning smoker with 2 75 gallon reservoirs that was built by himself.  Will Fleischman was using a custom built indirect smoker that we were unable to catch the logo of what brand it was…we’re still investigating though.  Ernest Servantes was using a custom built Pitmaker Smoker.  We’ve taken a liking to these smokers as they’ve gotten pretty good ratings from our friend Bigmista and hell, they look nice as well.

Both Buzzie and Will are BBQ Restaurant owners however Will had never been in a BBQ competition before.  We’d be the first to tell you that Restaurant BBQ and Competition BBQ are 2 totally different amimals..no pun intended.  Ernest is a BBQ competition cook and caterer who has won several competitions.

This season’s first episode definitely didn’t hold back on the smack talk.  You had Buzzie, tending to his custom pit that seemed like a fuel hog, hollering over to Ernest chastising him for “letting the pit do the work”.  Buzzie then stated that Ernest was just sitting and drinking a lot of beer and not doing any BBQing.  If you know like we know, BBQ, and BBQ competitions in particular involve a ton of beer consumption.  Ernest’s witty response back was “I come to do 2 things buzzie, chew bubblegum and kick ass.  Last night I ran outta bubblegum so all I have left is to whip some ass”.  Another surprise in the show was Will Fleischman stating that foiling the meat is cheating.  This process of foiling is called the “Texas Crutch” that comes from guess where?

While we can only judge on one of the 3 competition categories, which is appearance, we tried our best.  Buzzie’s appearance was top of the line while Will’s over-cooked brisket seemed somewhat mushy or perhaps he could have submitted a better looking slice.

Placing:

3) Lockhart Smokehouse

2) Burnt Bean Company

1) Buzzie’s BBQ Restaurant

The BBQ Pitmasters started off this season with a sneak preview on Wednesday May 30th in Tupelo Mississippi.  The judges for this season were Myron Mixon, Tuffy Stone and new comer Aaron Franklin where the others either competed or judged in seasons past.

Meet the Competitiors:

Jim Stancil chief cook of Bare Knuckles BBQ – Oxford, GA

Hank maiden chief cook of Cotton Patch Cooking crew – Columbus Mississippi

Solomon Williams of Carolina Rib King – Georgetown, SC

One thing I loved about this episode is that there was emphasis on each contestant’s smoker.  Jim Stancil was cooking on a ceramic cooker by Primo.  Hank Vaiden came in with one Jack’s Old South smoker and one Backwoods smoker.  Solomon Williams came in with a rotisserie smoker and I could be wrong but it looked like an Old Hickory or Southern Pride smoker.  The show also mentioned what type of smoker each one was i.e. indirect, rotisserie, or water.

The subject meats in this competition was Beef Brisket and Beef Tri-Tip.  The latter is something that is not seen much east of the Mississippi more on that later.  Both meats were the “waygu” type which Tuffy explained came from a breed of cattle from japan that were massaged and coddled and fed a lavish diet.  All of the cooks were given 11hrs to cook both of these meats.  There was definitely a difference in cooking styles between the teams as some went hot and fast, which is slowly becoming more popular in competition BBQ while others went low and slow.  The show revealed the temperatures that each team cooked at as well which in conjunction with the other info shared, I’m sure will give the novice cooker some awesome learning points should they want to make a jump into competition or even backyard BBQ.  One thing we couldn’t understand is the team with the most experience with cooking tri-tips, Bare Knuckles BBQ at about 100 a year, starting cooking the tri-tip within the last hour allotted.  Unsurprisingly comments were made about its taste and tenderness that could probably have been offset had this meat been given a little longer cook time.  One other notable, was that Jim Stancil’s boxes was hands down top notch and bested both of the other pitmaster’s appearance.

Placing

3) Bare Knuckles BBQ

2) Cotton Patch Cooking Crew

1) Carolina Rib King

CONCLUSION

We believe the folks at Original Media knocked it out of the park this go round.  This looks to be the best marriage between season 1 and 2 possible.  We enjoyed all aspects of it from the banter to the educational lower-thirds throughout the show.  Also the judging was changed to blind judging and making this that much closer to KCBS judging.  Jim caught a bad break as it seemed he was punished for not including burnt ends with his brisket turn in.  Stay tuned to Huck’s Hut for our recaps this season as we’ll be breaking down these episodes for you one by one!!!

We caught up with BBQ Bob the other day and he gave us a look at the newly released Cyber-Q wifi unit.  Hit the jump for the video

We were at Pork in the Park in Salisbury Md this weekend and our neighbor had a smoker disguised as a train. John was nice enough to allow us to explain it. Check it out!!!

Well it sure looks like it to us.  Looks like Myron Mixon is back as a judge and now Tuffy Stone is as well.  We’re not sure who the other guy is all the way to the right but we’ll update this post once we’ve figured that out.

**The 3rd judge is Aaron Franklin**

Photo Credit: Nancy Duncan Montgomery

This may be news to some and not others but Thermapen, just this morning released a new color thermapen that looks similar to one that stayed on the beach too long.  What better time than now for this color to come out when those of us on the east coast are having summer temperatures prior to the official start of spring!!  No word in yet on if it is faster than the blue one. Go ahead post in the comments below which one you think is faster.

We don’t have any specs in particular but what you are looking at is the latest pit temp control device from the fine folks at the BBQ Guru.  We hope to have a review for you coming up on the near future.

In this episode, the crew talks about pitmasters season 3, competition chicken, past and future event and more!! Listen after the jump.