RAYMONDVILLE — From across the Lone Star State, Texas’ finest chuck wagon chefs are driving their souped-up trailers into town for one of the Rio Grande Valley’s hottest cook-offs.
On Friday and Saturday, more than 140 teams will be dueling their forks and tongs for a shot at $50,000 worth of prize money at the city’s first International Barbecue Cookers Association cook-off.
Like they do on the Food Network, they’ll be dishing out some of the best barbecue brisket, chicken and pork ribs in the country at the two-day IBCA Showdown off Industrial Drive.
But they’ve got to beat hometown chef Jerry Cardenas’ award-winning recipe to drive away with the top prize.
“I would say Texas has the best barbeque in the country,” Cardenas said. “It’s tough. There are a lot of good cooks. The judge gets one bite — and that one bite has to stand out like no one else’s.”
Since he first fired up his grill five years ago, he’s been hard to beat on the barbecue circuit.
Today, he stands as the IBCA’s second-ranked cook.
In 1989, a group of barbecue connoisseurs founded the IBCA a year after meeting in Irving to hatch the birth of what would become Texas’ premier barbecue network and the second-biggest in the country, boasting 3,000 members.
Cardenas is proud of his membership.
“It’s something I do on a weekly basis,” Cardenas, owner of Space Pro Self Storage in Elsa, said. “I do cook-offs all over the state of Texas.”
Firing up the grill
For more than 100 years, Raymondville has been known for the area’s sprawling ranches steeped in Texas lore and its famed boot makers.
Now, it’s on the map as a stop along the state’s barbecue cook-off trail.
“I want this to be what Raymondville is known for,” David Correa, coordinator of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said.
From as far as Alabama and Arkansas, some of country’s finest modern-day chuck wagon chefs will be putting their prized recipes on the grill for the big cook-off.
“We’re excited to be hosting it,” Correa said. “This will be the first time we host an event of this magnitude.”
From Lubbock to Fort Worth, about 140 teams are hauling about 500 barbecue connoisseurs into town.
“This is upper echelon,” Correa said. “These are the front-runners in terms of barbecue competitions. These are the kinds of trailers you see on shows dedicated to barbecue competitions — the cable channels like the Food Network. These are big trailers decked out and modified with all kinds of different accessories besides the grill. These are professional barbecue competition cooks. Some of them do this for a living.”
Bursting taste buds
For Raymondville, the cook-off means more than setting its mark on the barbecue circuit.
“It’s going to be good for us — we’ve got a lot of teams coming,” Mayor Gilbert Gonzales said. “It’s going to give us a good economic impact. The hotels are going to be full and the stores are going to be selling.”
Across the Rio Grande Valley, about 20 teams are cooking up hot batches of championship Texas cuisine for the smoking showdown, Correa said.
“It’s starting to grow in our community,” Gonzales said of barbecue cook-offs. “It’s starting to get more popular.”
