Pitmasters Episode 5: Recipes We Cooked

Wow Episode 5 of Food Network’s competition series Pitmasters was a real cliffhanger. Susie (Hey Grill Hey) and I faced multiple challenges this week, but how we finished was left up in the air.

As always though we’re sharing the recipes they did show, so you can make them at home.

The Big Burn: 4 Core Meats

No time to sleep, it’s time to move onto the next challenge. This time, we’ve been asked to cook the four core meats of barbecue: chicken, pork ribs, pork shoulder and brisket.

We were given 12 hours total, but each protein had to be turned in on a rolling schedule. We had 3 hours for chicken, 5 hours for ribs, 8 hours for shoulder and the full 12 hours for brisket.

As soon as they announced that, I got a huge burst of energy. I cook four meats on a rolling schedule at least once a month when I do competition BBQ.

When I looked around, the other teams looked a little bit stressed, but 12 hours was no problem for us. I usually start a comp at 5 a.m. and finish by 2 p.m.

Because I can cook these four meats in my sleep, there wasn’t a whole lot to strategize other than flavors. At comps, I usually use a blend of Girls Can Grill BBQ rubs and a mix of store-bought sauces. We of course didn’t have any of those available, so we had to make everything from scratch.

We wanted our turn-ins to have a theme, so we decided to use fruits in our sauces. We thought it would be a fun twist. Our menu plan was Raspberry Chipotle Chicken, Yuzu Citrus Pork Ribs, Whiskey Peach Pork and Cherry Smoked Brisket.

Meat 1: Chicken

First up was chicken. In a traditional BBQ competition, we cook the chicken in pieces, not whole. While other teams chose to spatchcock their birds, we broke ours down completely and threw it in Susie’s simple chicken brine.

I did a full competition trim on the thighs. This involved removing and scraping the skins and then placing them back on. Removing that excess fat helps them render quicker, so the skin was perfectly bite through. For the legs, I also removed the tendon.

After the trim and brine, we seasoned them with a combination of Girls Can Grill Chicken Rub and Hey Grill Hey Chicken Rub and threw them on the smoker. After a quick smoke, they were finished in pans with butter to add more flavor and juiciness.

We added the fruit component at the end by making a raspberry chipotle sauce and mixing it with Hey Grill Hey barbecue sauce.

The Unexpected Challenge: Weather

As we were in our groove, all of a sudden the temperature dropped, the wind picked up and a storm rolled through. It started with rain and transitioned into a full-on hail storm.

The other teams were scrambling, but honestly Susie and I felt really good because our chicken was on the smoker, not on the open fire. Our biggest concern was that our food was going to get cold – but not ruined.

Being from Vegas, where we only get 4 inches of rain a year, I actually loved the change in weather. They didn’t show it on camera, but I was running in the rain and hail and soaking it up. I don’t let twists and turns bring me down.

Chicken Judging

The rain and hail stopped, and the turn-in window was closing. Instead of making a formal platter presentation, we wanted the meat to shine, so I found these plates that looked like fancy paper plates. We kept it clean and simple, but we did add something unexpected – crispy chicken skins sprinkled on top. Jess noted that it was really pretty.

The chicken turn ins were not great from some of the other teams, but I’ll let you watch the show to see what happened there. As for our chicken, Big Moe said we nailed the tenderness of our skin, and Jess and Ernest said it was finger-licking good.

Meat 2: Ribs

As soon as Susie turned in the chicken, she ran back to our station to help me finish up the ribs. We were given a couple racks of spare pork ribs. Personally, I don’t like cooking full spare ribs because the brisket bones contain a lot of cartilage. So again, we did a competition trim on the ribs, and cut them into St. Louis Style Ribs.

We used the hot and fast ribs method and seasoned them with Girls Can Grill Pork Rub and Hey Grill Hey Sweet Rub. We cooked them on the offset smoker.

When you cook ribs hot and fast, you start by smoking them and then you braise them in a wrap with moisture. For the fruit component, we originally wanted to go in an Asian direction with pineapple, but we couldn’t find pineapple in the pantry, so we chose to use yuzu instead.

Yuzu is an Asian citrus that is a little sweet like an orange and a bit sour like a lemon.

After the braise, once they were nice and tender, we finished them with more of the yuzu glaze and plated them up with some sliced green onion.

Ribs Judging

This time, I turned in the plate of sweet yuzu ribs. I could see that the other teams mostly kept their ribs as spares, so I felt good about the presentation of ours, and I knew that the judges would find them to be nice and tender.

Ernest, Big Moe and Jess immediately commented that they had nice texture, but they were not as thrilled with the flavor of the sauce. Andrew wanted more yuzu.

Meat 3: Pork

By the way, we had no idea what their feedback was after each round. We just dropped our plate and ran back to our stations.

There was no looking back, no matter the outcome, so we were driven to get that pork nice and tender. Again, I did a full-on competition pork trim. These shoulders were huge. It wasn’t just an 8-pound shoulder you’d find at the grocery. They were probably 15 pounds or so and included the Boston butt and picnic shoulder.

I knew we only needed enough meat to get some nice money muscle medallions and some pulled tubes and bacon, so I trimmed the heck out of it, which allowed us to cook it so much faster on the offset.

We seasoned the meat just like the ribs with Girls Can Grill Pork Rub and Hey Grill Hey Sweet Rub. Then, we wrapped the pork with some butter, syrup and juice. And to finish off the flavor, we used Hey Grill Hey Whiskey Peach BBQ Sauce.

Pork Judging

Susie ran the plate to the judges while I nursed the brisket. The turn-ins this round were so different. A few teams did plates of pork similar to ours. Others did more composed dishes with pork.

“Susie and Christie know their way around a pork shoulder,” Ernest said. “The money muscle, perfect. The pulled pork, perfect texture.” But they all agreed we made it a little too sweet and needed a pop of salt. Moe said we played it safe.

Even though we still had a brisket to turn in, this week’s episode ended there, so we don’t know yet if we’re on the top or the bottom. You’re going to have to tune in next week to see who gets named the Grand Champion of the Pitmasters Core Four.

See What We Cook Up Next

Catch new episodes of Pitmasters live Mondays at 9/8c on Food Network, or streaming the next day on HBO Max. Make sure to stop by next week to see how we did in episode 6.