Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Righteous Ribs: Ric Gilbert checks on his ribs as they come out of the convection compartment in his high-tech Internet-enabled barbecue. Gilbert has computerized his cooker with a fan that comes on and off to keep the temperature constant.

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Ric Gilbert's team won West Coast championship for chicken

By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Ric Gilbert barbecues the best cotton-pickin' finger-lickin' chicken in West San Jose--hey, make that on the West Coast. On the barbecue competition circuit in 2006, his team, Ric's Righteous Ribs, won team of the year and the West Coast championship for chicken.

His team ranks as one of the top teams overall on the West Coast; it has won three first-place titles in five California competitions. It also appeared on a Food Network show on competitive barbecuing. And those are just some of his team's awards for last year.

Who knew the grill of victory was just around the corner in San Jose?

"This is truly a hobby that has gone wild," Gilbert said.

Hog wild, maybe, because his barbecued ribs are award-winning, too.

Actually, he seldom grills his meat. He barbecues it. The difference between grilling and barbecuing, he says, is simple: Grilling is over the coals; barbecuing uses indirect heat.

And all the barbecuing is wood-fired--no gas, he said. No briquettes, no lighter fluid.

Gilbert's cooker is not your average backyard barbecue. Gilbert designed it and had it built. But he keeps finding things he wants to change so he keeps rebuilding it. He named his cooker Sarah, after Sarah Winchester, known for her continuous building and remodeling at Winchester Mystery House, like Gilbert and his barbecue.

Some on the competitive circuit spend $15,000 on their barbecue rigs. Gilbert has computerized his cooker with a fan that comes on and off to keep the temperature constant. "I can dial in a temperature. How Silicon Valley is that?"

This year on the first Saturday of spring, March 24, Gilbert invited six other top California barbecue teams to come to his San Jose home for a practice competitive barbecue session. Gilbert had two official judges on hand, plus the vice president of the California Barbeque Association.

He wanted a chance to "knock the rust off before the competition begins." The teams came from all over the state and set up their cooking rigs in the driveway and the front and back yards. A couple from Clovis pitched tents in his back yard for weekend camping.

One team set up a 24-foot trailer in Gilbert's front yard. Another team, with a red cooker in the shape of a train engine, with barbecue smoke puffing out of the chimney, parked on the front lawn.

"Thank goodness I have great neighbors," Gilbert said.

Ed Heinlein lives next door. He trotted down Gilbert's driveway carrying guacamole and chips.

"I didn't know competitive barbecuing existed until Ric moved in [about three years ago]," Heinlein said. "All those good smells come over the fence. It has been fascinating to be his neighbor. He's a great cook. My favorite is his chicken."

One of the goals of competitive barbecuing is to cook for charitable causes. Last year, Heinlein helped Ric with the Great Gilroy Gobbler Gathering. He cooked enough turkeys to feed 1,500 needy people. He delivered turkeys to homeless shelters and got into the immigrant camps, he said.

Finger-lickin' good

Competitive barbecuing began in the United States about 30 years ago. The Kansas City Barbeque Society is the granddaddy of competitive barbecuing associations and held its first competition in 1980. KCBS has about 6,500 paid members and serves another 10,000 through its website. This is the sanctioning body that organizes the rules and authorizes the competitions, said Ben Lobenstein, vice president of the California Barbeque Association. KCBS offers the classes that train the judges and sets the standards for judging and competing.

The California group began about 10 years ago. It has about 250 paid members and serves about 1,000 more from its website. The barbecue folks and judges are all volunteers.

"I'm just a foodie at heart," Lobenstein said.

The World Series of competitive barbecuing includes the American Royal event in Kansas City, Mo., and the Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational in Lynchburg, Tenn., Lobenstein said.

Prize money at some of the top competitions might be $15,000 to $20,000. But that money is divided among the top five finishers in each of four categories plus a prize to best of show.

A dozen teams is the minimum needed to hold an official competition. So far in California, 50 is the largest number of teams to enter a contest. Lobenstein expects to break that this year. Several top contests are aiming for 100 entrants, he said.

"It's a growing sport, a growing event," he said.

There are some all-women teams and some co-ed teams. But it is mostly a guy thing, according to barbecue fans, a middle-aged-guy thing; about "releasing your inner Billy-Bob."

There are barbecue sauce-of-the-month programs. There are teams called the Super Swine Sizzlers, the Big Dawgs and Pit Stop. Folks agree the "barbecue community is a good bunch of people."

That was evident at Gilbert's early spring backyard camp-out cook-off. Team members strolled from cooker to cooker, exchanging tips, swapping ideas. Gilbert kept his chicken moist with a squirt bottle filled with apple juice. He opened his cooker, slid out a tray and squirted the apple juice on the thighs.

In an oven next to his chicken, he had six racks of ribs cooking. "You don't want to take a chance on one rack of ribs to get six perfect ribs" for the judges, he said. So for his backyard cook-off, he had four racks of baby backs and two racks of spareribs cooking.

Gilbert has been doing competitive barbecuing for about seven years, regular barbecuing for about 15 years and grilling for 30-plus years.

His mania for barbecuing chicken began when he cooked some for his fiancée, Janet Kulig--now his wife--on a little hibachi in the back yard.

"It was awful!" Gilbert said. "I wanted to learn about it. I began researching barbecued chicken and found out about the whole world of competitive barbecuing. Holy smokes!" and he was off.

His daughters, Hannah, 17, and Rebecca, 13, have discerning palates for good barbecue.

"When we go on vacation," Gilbert said, "we hit every barbecue we come to."

And his girls critique each one: this sauce is too tart; this meat is too tough; the meat on these ribs is not pulling off the bone.

"I've created little barbecue monsters," he said.

"I don't like barbecue anyplace else," Rebecca, an eighth-grader at Moreland Middle School, said. "It's not juicy; it doesn't have as much flavor" as her dad's.

She went with her father to the California State Championships in Azusa a few years ago.

"He let me do the brisket. And I cooked the seventh-best brisket in the state of California," she grinned.

It wasn't just a guy thing that year in the contest. There was an all-woman team next to the Gilberts.

"Good ribs," Gilbert says, "should have a little bit of tug coming off the bone. When barbecuing, there's a small window [of time] when it just clings a little bit." You don't want the meat to just fall off the bone, he said.

The teams started their fires at 9 a.m., and the first "turn-in time" for judging was at 2 p.m. for tri-tip. Gilbert made sure each team had a white Styrofoam clam-shell box for its entries. The boxes are lined up on a table in front of the judges. Each box has a number so the judges don't know who submitted which entry.

Each entry is judged on three things: presentation, tenderness and taste. Lettuce, parsley and cilantro are approved garnishes for the meat. There must be six identifiable pieces of barbecue in the box. Each of the seven teams on Saturday had artfully arranged its slices of tri-tip on a bed of green-leaf lettuce. You want a nice fluff of green but no lettuce hanging out of the box.

"If you see puddles of grease, you give a lower score," said Nathan Stein, a judge from San Francisco. If there is more than a quarter-sized puddle, it is an automatic disqualification. Chunks of crust floating around from the tri-tip are not good. For presentation, "It's the details," Stein said.

Then the judges consider tenderness. Each takes a piece of meat. "Sometimes it looks great but the taste... What were they thinking?" Stein said. "Is it cooked properly? Not too much, not too little.

"Some use sauce, some don't," Stein said. "Some meat doesn't come out right so they cover it with sauce. If there's too much sauce, you kind of know automatically they're covering up something."

The tri-tips all scored pretty well at the Saturday contest. But the chicken entries didn't do as well.

After judging for appearance, master judge Frank Boyer, one of 12 master judges in California, picked up a piece of chicken to check for taste and tenderness. Before he could take a bite, he stopped and pointed out the hair hanging from the underside of the chicken thigh. "An automatic disqualification," Boyer said.

Six of the seven chicken entries looked good and scored well on presentation. But some were way off on tenderness and taste. One was slimy and not cooked enough.

But the winning chicken had skin that was lightly crisped, the meat "bit well"--barbecue talk for tender--and the taste was a hint of heaven with some spices, a touch of tang and just the right amount of sweetness.

Judges are not paid.

"You do it because you love it," Boyer said.

Sometimes judges have their expenses paid. They are trained in five-hour classes using the rules of the Kansas City Barbeque Society.

Gilbert was pleased with his Saturday practice barbecue. At official competitive barbecue events, the participants do not get to see the other entries or hear the judges' comments. At Gilbert's event, there was feedback from the judges, and participants could ask questions and taste each other's offerings.

And it brought over a couple more of Gilbert's neighbors to check out the activity. At the end of the day, Gilbert gave the event an A-plus. The teams have had an early spring shakedown, and now they're cookin'.