Sam's Club National BBQ Tour

The first of five Regional contests that will ultimately send 50 teams to the Finals in Bentonville, AR this fall was held in Las Vegas on May 7. Ten of the thirty teams in that contest advanced to the final round and of those ten teams, two of them are all-WSM teams

<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>Rhythm 'n QUE
<LI>The Smoking Hills[/list]
and four more use at least one WSM in their set up
<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>I.A.B. 30 BBQ
<LI>Iowa's Smokey D's BBQ
<LI>McFrankenboo BBQ
<LI>Sweet Peppers[/list]

That means that 60% of the current field in the final round is either an All-WSM team or a partial-WSM team.

Yeah, I guess those little black bullets are serious cookers!

Congrats Vin, not a doubt in my mind.

Sweet!

Congrats Vince!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Yeah, I guess those little black bullets are serious cookers! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You're preaching to the choir but I had a though and was wondering if you could lend your opinion:

With the wsm, I can easily afford to have 3 with me on site at a comp (4 cookers if you count a kettle), and have each meat running on its own time/temp/smoke wood schedule. It gives me ultimate flexibility with my techniques and methods. Never having cooked on a single FEC or Jambo, I wonder how teams do it, and how much it holds back what they can do.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by j biesinger:
With the wsm, I can easily afford to have 3 with me on site at a comp (4 cookers if you count a kettle), and have each meat running on its own time/temp/smoke wood schedule. It gives me ultimate flexibility with my techniques and methods. Never having cooked on a single FEC or Jambo, I wonder how teams do it, and how much it holds back what they can do. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

While I agree with your philosophy that mulitple cookers give you greater options, it is clearly not a necessity in order to cook championship barbeque. Many of the top teams in the nation are using FECs, Jambos and a number of other cookers. I strongly believe that success and failure have a great deal to do with being a good cook as well as really knowing how to best use your equipment.

Truth be told, we use WSMs because they were what we could afford when we began competing about 5 years ago. We have ammassed a great deal of knowledge about how to get the most out of them but we're always looking for new tips and tricks. And they're out there! The better you know your cooker, the easier it is to become innovative with your cooking.

While we're all big fans of WSMs, they're just one of the many great cookers available and there are many great cooks proving that every weekend.