Phil Gaudet from Clare, N.S., applies a dry rub spice mix to a hog before smoking at the Memphis in May festival on May 15.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
The preparation starts with a dead pig splayed out on a table in a Memphis parking lot, a winged angel of raw meat and possibility in one of the food world’s great competitions.
Paper towels are wrapped around the outer skin to keep it clean and free of dry rub spices, lest they spoil a golden appearance that will be augmented with a few spritzes of duck fat before the beast is delivered to the smoker. A potion of fruit juices, sugars, salts and vinegar is injected into the meat. Layers of bacon are then quilted onto its exposed insides, a colour guard to prevent blackening over its 24 hours in the smoker, leaving the meat an appealing shade of mahogany. The bacon fat will also help baste the meat as it cooks.
Mr. Gaudet was one of only a few Canadians to compete in the festival.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
But nothing demands more attention than the loin, the thinner strap of back meat that must be kept to roughly 155 F, cooked medium. Much more and it turns to the consistency of sawdust, while the thicker ham and shoulder must reach nearly 200 degrees, hot enough to render the fat so it pulls apart easily.
“You’ve got to get the loin right, the shoulder right and the ham right. And the loin’s going to cook a lot faster than the other two,” said Phil Gaudet, one of only a few Canadians to compete last week at Memphis in May, a festival some call the Super Bowl of swine.
Whole hog is the marquee event, a chance for competitors to test their mettle against the lions of American barbecue.
It is a hellacious business, balancing the three cuts. But “we have, I think, one of the best loins around,” Mr. Gaudet said.
The secret − and there are many in this business − lies in fighting the heat. Ice bags are used to gird the loin. So, too, are frozen pork bellies.
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After a full day of smoking, the pig police, also known as the hog patrol, show up to ensure that every cut of meat delivered to the judges in a blind box comes from the same animal, rather than cobbled together from multiple hogs.
“Hundredths of points matter,” said Michelle O’Guin, the festival’s chair of contest judges. “Trust me, the cheating is bad.”
But for those who can prevail in one of the toughest competitions in barbecue, there is glory in the pursuit of perfection. Memphis in May draws luminaries from the rarefied universe of smoke: Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, the pioneers of Alabama white sauce; Jack’s Old South, led by the so-called “winningest man in barbecue”; Wickers, a Missouri outfit that boasts “The Best Baste in America.”
The Cook the Books team apply bacon to a hog before smoking it.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
“It’s kind of a special place, right?” said Mr. Gaudet, 38, a francophone Acadian accountant from Clare, N.S., who is, himself, a bit of a unique presence in Memphis.
“Where I live is probably the worst spot in the world to live for barbecue,” he said. Clare lies three flights from anywhere with a tradition of smoked meats. Local specialties include lobster, which Mr. Gaudet hates, and rappie pie, a potato dish he loves, although “some will say it looks like snot.”
But he is now a Memphis in May champion after his team, Cook the Books, took top honours in chicken, delivering a succulent bird presented to the judges on a bed of kale in a box polished clean with Q-tips. The skin, which had been removed and scraped free of fat before being reinstalled for smoking, gave way easily to the teeth. The flavour was enhanced by a brine from other teammates, Texans Phil and Carmen Breeden, that adds a little beef for richness. The bird was spritzed with a substance − one they won’t disclose − that left its skin with a piano gloss.
Ontario pitmaster Stephen Perrin is a French-trained chef who studied under the Roux brothers.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
“It’s like the detailing of a car. Because you eat with your eyes first,” said another teammate, Stephen Perrin, an Ontario pitmaster who has spent years competing in the U.S.
Judges scored the chicken a perfect-perfect, winning unblemished marks for appearance, tenderness, flavour and overall impression.
Cook the Books missed the finals in the whole hog division by 0.06 points but finished in the top 10, beating out Jack’s Old South and a host of other, more established competitors. Their chicken wings barely missed the podium.
Altogether, “it’s the best we’ve ever done,” said Mr. Perrin, a French-trained chef who studied under the Roux brothers − their best-known understudy is Gordon Ramsay − and worked with a team that opened Ontario restaurants such as Terra in Toronto, HEIST Restaurant + Wine Club in Kingston and Rusty’s at Blue, a smokehouse at the base of the Blue Mountain ski resort.
The Cook the Books team delivers a hog to the smoker for a 24-hour cook.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
There are clear disadvantages to being a Canadian in barbecue. A child in Memphis has a far better chance of growing up around the smells and textures of a smoker than someone in Mississauga. For the Canadians, the best barbecue pits are made in Texas. The best pigs are raised by a Minnesota farm company that uses ultrasound scans to identify sires and dams with the best fat marbling.
That’s not to say Canadians don’t like to cook outdoors. A 2021 report by the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association found that 70 per cent of Canadian households own a grill or smoker, a number identical to the U.S. figure. Data from the U.S. census suggest that just 5 per cent of Americans use their grill multiple times a week. In Canada, a survey by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab found that four in 10 Canadians do the same − at least, in the summer months.
But the slow, smoky world of southern barbecue remains more firmly rooted in the places where it was born. When Mr. Gaudet wanted to advance his craft, he flew to Missouri to attend weekend barbecue competition classes. The biggest learning curve, he said, was about tenderness, a measure that goes beyond digital temperature measurements.
“It’s all feeling,” he said. “Once you get it, you get it.”
Competition, though, requires a great deal more, not the least of which is money. A single weekend at Memphis in May costs $15,000 to $20,000. And it’s costly enough in time that Mr. Gaudet’s ebullient return home from Tennessee quickly thrust him up against less happy realities. He planned to travel to Montreal for another competition at the end of May, a Kansas City Barbeque Society-sanctioned event that could qualify him for the BBQ World Cup in Las Vegas next year.
But “I think I’m going to back out of Montreal,” he said this week. The price of fuel hasn’t helped travel costs. Winning can boost business − an award lends authority to a line of spices or, for Cook the Books, perhaps a powdered version of their meat injection sauce.
For an accountant, though, even a champion at chicken, other practical realities also loom.
“The World Cup is in April,” Mr. Gaudet said. “I’m going to be busy with taxes then.”