Ashley Smith - World Championship BBQ Cookoff VP of Publicity Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, yeah, we love our barbecue in Texas. Seven fifty
two is our time. So what better place to have
Houston's biggest barbecue showdown than the Houston Livestop Show in
Rodeo starts today at NRG Park runs through March. The
first join us to talk about Ashley Smith with the
Rodeo Ashley, Good morning. Does the smell down there yet?

(00:23):
It does?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We're trying to replace all this fog with barbecue smoke.
It's a good place to be today.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh I'm just seeing my mouth is sturting the water
just thinking about all the barbecue that's down there. How
many different competitors do you have this year?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
We have two hundred and fifty teams from all over
the state, country, and world.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
And that's kind of what separates this from your average
barbecue contest, right, I mean, this is not just a
local competition or state wide competition. You have people from
who's the farthest, who came the furthest to participate this year.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, my middle school geography teachers to be real sad
that I can't tell you the exact numbers, but we've
got teams from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Venezuela, We've Mexico,
Great Britain. So I'm gonna need somebody that's better geography
to tell me which one's the furthest of those seven countries.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
I'm I guess New Zealand just off the top of
my head. That's that's that's on the other side of
the planet. As far as coming all this, as far
as coming all this way to participate, so obviously it's
important competition. There's a lot of pride that goes with
winning the title, right.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, we've got teams that this is one of their
bucket list competitions that they want to say that they've
won Houston or got first in one of the categories
in Houston, so they're they're here and they want one
of those trophies.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
How many different barbecue competitions do you have? I'm assuming
you probably have a park division, or you have a
park roast division, in a in a brisket division. How
many different divisions do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So we have three meat category, so we do a
whole chicken, we do pork, ribs, and briskets. We also
have an open contest, so that can be anything that
the teams want to submit. That's not a dessert because
we also have a Dutch oven dessert competition. So those
are the five that our teams are competing in. And
then we also have a Junior Cookoff that we have

(02:20):
a drawing where thirty five competitors ages eight to fourteen
can compete in the Junior Cookoff that they do a
steak presentation.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, so every day you have different competitions going on.
They start cooking their meats first thing in the morning,
I'm sure, and then when does the judging usually happen.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
So the judging for our Junior Cookoff, our open contests,
and our Dutch oven desserts happen on Friday, and then
all of the meat judging happens on Saturday, and we
announce our winners on stage at seven pm on Saturday
at the Guarden Stage sponsored by Miller LT.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Okay, terrific. And I guess one of the side effects
obviously of a I think a barbecue competition where you're
spelling all this barbecue, you're going to get hungry for
barbecue and you can't. They're cooking for competition, so they're
not feeding people, right, but there is an opportunity to
get barbecue. It's it's not going to be the competition cooks,
but it's going to be good barbecue.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
It is. So we've got our chuck wagon that is
open to the public. Your admission ticket includes a barbecue
plate from there. They've got sliced brisket, they've got sausage,
beans and chips. They've got a seating area and that's
right next to our rock in our saloon where we've
got a DJ in live music, and it's caddy corner
to our live music stage as well. So all of

(03:38):
this is a part of your admission.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Ticket, all right. For those who want to get a
rundown on what the hours are and ticket prices and
all that good stuff, where should they go?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
So they can go to Rodio Houston. The website or
they do have an app. The radio's an app that
also has information on parking and admission all that information.
So whether you're a website person, are at person, the
information is out there for you to access as easily
as possible.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
All right, awesome, Ashley, Thank you. Ashley Smith the World
Championship Barbecue Cookoff. She's the VP of Publicity. Listen, y'all
have a great day. We'll see tomorrow morning, bright nearly
five am. I think I'm gonna go get some brisket.
See you this afternoon. Four I hope on AM nine
fifty k PRC