Welcome to the home of the Lazy Q, the best barbecue team in Madison County, Tennessee, and that's not bragging, that's just the truth, because as far as we know we're the only one. Four buddies, one wife who's the brains of the operation, one dad who can weld anything to anything, and a smoker made out of a propane tank. We've been cooking contests since 1997. We have not won Memphis. We have not entered Memphis. Give us time.

I'm Billy Mason, team captain. I'm 29 and I manage a tire shop in Jackson, which means I spend all week smelling rubber and all weekend smelling hickory, and my wife says she can't tell which is worse. The name was her idea. She said a team that sits in lawn chairs for fourteen hours watching a thermometer ought to have "lazy" in the name somewhere. She was right then and she's been right ever since.

Billy Mason, captain and pitmaster. Fire, meat, decisions, and blame.

Carrie Mason, sauce boss and scorekeeper. My wife. She makes the sauce, keeps every score sheet we've ever gotten back in a three-ring binder with colored tabs, and reads them on the drive home out loud, every comment, including the mean ones. When we lose, she's the one who figures out why. When we win, she's the one who knew we would. She is the brains. We are the lawn chairs.

Thomas Mason, smoker builder and night shift. My dad. He's been a welder for thirty-five years and built the Torpedo in his shop out of an old propane tank. He takes the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. fire watch at every contest because he says he doesn't sleep anyway, and because he doesn't trust us with his smoker.

Charlie Maddox, ribs. We went to high school together. Charlie trims ribs like a surgeon and won't let anybody else touch them. Our first-place ribs this year were his, and he'd want me to tell you that.

Bobby Stinnett, chicken and logistics. Bobby's a route driver for a snack company, so he knows every back road in three states and owns the biggest cooler you've ever seen. He also does our chicken, and it's getting good.

Greg Esquibel, brisket (God help him). The youngest of us. Brisket is a Texas thing and we are not from Texas, and the judges know it. Greg has taken it on as a personal crusade. He reads everything. He calls people in Texas long distance. He's getting closer.

Dad built it in the winter of 1996 out of a 250-gallon propane tank he got from a farm sale for $40. (He purged it and cleaned it out properly first, and if you're thinking about doing this yourself, have somebody who knows what they're doing do that part. Dad has been welding since before I was born and he still took two weeks over it.) He cut a door in the side on hinges, welded a firebox onto one end, put a stack on the other, ran two racks inside, and mounted the whole thing on a trailer with a wheel off a boat trailer for the tongue jack. It's painted flat black and it looks exactly like a torpedo, which is how it got its name, and people walk over at every contest just to look at it.

It holds eight pork shoulders, or twelve slabs of ribs, or one whole hog up to about 150 pounds. It burns split hickory, with a little apple for the ribs. On a calm night it'll hold 235 degrees for an hour without me touching it. On a windy night it holds whatever it wants.

Six contests this year, two each in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi, from April to September. We cooked in shoulder, ribs, chicken, brisket and whole hog, depending on what each contest offered, and finished in the top five of a category ten times, in the top five overall three times, and brought home $2,375 in prize money. Every place and every dollar is on the results page.

The big one: FIRST PLACE RIBS at the Hickory Days Cook-Off in western Kentucky on May 15, out of forty-two teams. When they called "Lazy Q" Charlie sat right down on the ground. Carrie screamed. Dad shook everybody's hand like he was running for office. We have the ribbon framed in the tire shop next to my business license, and it's bigger.

The night it rained: the Delta Smoke-Off in north Mississippi, June 4 and 5. At about 2:00 in the morning a thunderstorm came through that the radio had said was going to miss us. It did not miss us. The canopy went over like a kite, the rain came in sideways, and the Torpedo dropped from 240 to 150 in about twenty minutes while I stood there holding a tarp over the firebox and Dad fed it split wood one stick at a time like he was nursing a baby bird. We lost two hours. The shoulders came off late and tight, and we finished 11th out of 27. Carrie spent the whole storm in the truck with the score binder in her lap, dry as a bone, and said later it was the most peaceful she's been all year.

Next up: our last contest of 1999, Friday and Saturday, October 15 and 16, at a county fairgrounds in Middle Tennessee. Shoulder, ribs and whole hog. If you're there, come by. We're the ones with the torpedo. The banana pudding is my mother's, and no, you can't have the recipe.

Everybody asks. Here's what's in our pork rub, in no particular order and with no amounts: brown sugar, paprika, kosher salt, coarse black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, a little dry mustard, a little cayenne. Plus one more thing, which Carrie came up with in our kitchen in 1998 and which I have been sworn not to tell. It's in the grocery store. You walk past it every week. That's all I'll say.

Honestly, the rub isn't the secret. The fire is the secret. Keep it steady and clean, and anybody's rub will make good barbecue. Keep it smoky and dirty and nobody's rub can save you.

Every contest has its own rules, but most of them judge on the same three things:

• Appearance. Does it look good enough to eat? Color, shine, the bark, the smoke ring, how it sits in the box. You eat with your eyes first.
• Taste. The big one. Smoke, seasoning, sauce if there is any, and how it all goes together. Too much of anything is a problem. Too much smoke is a bigger problem than too little.
• Tenderness. Ribs should come off the bone clean with a bite, but not fall off when you pick them up. A fall-off-the-bone rib is overcooked, and good judges know it. Shoulder should pull. Brisket should bend over a finger without breaking.

At some contests your meat goes into a numbered foam box and a table of judges in a tent scores it blind. At others, judges come to your cook site, and you show them the smoker and talk them through your cook, and then you serve them. Both have their charms. The blind ones are fairer. The on-site ones are more fun, especially when Dad gets to show off the Torpedo.

1999 Results Table  |  Barbecue 101

Hungry people who've stopped by:


Questions, invitations to judge your mama's cooking, or teams that want to trade notes: [email protected]
Last updated September 22, 1999