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Team Talk
A few years ago after meeting UK BBQ Godfather John Hargate and trying his incredible food, we discovered the wonders of American style Low ‘n’ Slow ‘Q. We quickly got ourselves a couple of smokers and started practicing.
We originally set up our BBQ Barons Twitter page, as a way of sharing photos of our journey with friends, but soon found our number of followers growing far and wide. On the back of this, we decided to set up our food blog, bbqbarons.com, which we launched back in January.
The blog gives us an opportunity to record and share some of our cooking adventures throughout the year. There are some classic recipes in there, but we also love nothing more than experimenting with different flavour profiles and cuts of meat, always learning by trying out new combinations and techniques.
It's not solely about grilling and smoking, there are guides on cold smoking, sausage making and basic charcuterie - home cured salmon, cold smoked butter and whisky oak smoked bacon are some of our favourites.
It’s fair to say we’re only occasional competitors, but have managed to compete at a handful of KCBS and IBQN comps as well as two Grillstocks. It's been a great learning curve to compete against so many talented and experienced cooks over the last few seasons; you pick up so many helpful tips along the way.
We’ve had some respectable results although we’re yet to get a walk – only one point off third place pork at Grillstock this year though – so near and yet so far! We have found it great fun adapting from backyard barbecuing, to serving up a different style of BBQ.
One thing we love to do at competitions is to make our own rubs, sauces and injections, from scratch. Perhaps it hasn’t delivered some of the results we’d like, but for us, it’s all part of the fun.
The BBQ Barons are Tom and Gareth, a couple of old school friends who have been cooking together for over twenty years.
Cooking outdoors for family and friends on the BBQ has been a long standing passion, and like most of the BBQ fraternity is something that continues all year round.