How did Barack Obama put it the other day in that slightly nauseating love-in with new bestest bud David Cameron? "We cherish common values and we speak a common language... most of the time"?
You're not kidding. I was idly flicking through the channels to find out when the brilliant Iron Chef USA was next on and caught The Food Network Challenge: The BBQ Cook Off (9pm, 20 July, Food Network).
OMG (as they say on both sides of the pond), it was hilarious. We Brits may think we love a BBQ as much as your average Aussie or Yank, but with our incinerated burgers, undercooked bangers and chewy skewers, we've got nothing on this lot. This was barbecuing on a gut-busting scale. The 258 teams gathered in Memphis for the cook-off could prepare anything they liked... as long as it was pork (more specifically: ribs, shoulder or whole hog). And boy, did they take the whole thing seriously.
Boasting names such as The Red Hot Smokers, The Killer Hogs and Jack's Old South, the teams literally went the whole hog to win. Some even started prepping the day before, diligently marinading, massaging in rubs, smoking or even injecting the meat to optimise its flavour and texture.
You'd think they were competing for serious money, not the piddly $3k up for grabs for the category champions and $22k overall winner's prize. There was lots of fighting talk of the "This ain't no corn dog contest, we're making real barbecue here" variety as well as musings over the quality of the "bark" (the skin) and debate among the whole hog contestants over the merits of laying the beast on its side or upside down (the first looks better but the second captures the juices).
The Americans don't do irony, of course, and it was without any that one of the Red Hot Smokers described the shoulder meat to the judge as "tender like a mother's love" while the Killer Hogs were confident they had impressed their judge when they noted "you could see his eyes roll back a little bit". They all looked scarily intense and David 'Doby' Hair (one of the Jack's Old South team) was so excitable they had to subtitle the poor bloke.
In the end, though, he was on the overall winning team. So going the whole hog clearly paid off.
More from this column
You're not kidding. I was idly flicking through the channels to find out when the brilliant Iron Chef USA was next on and caught The Food Network Challenge: The BBQ Cook Off (9pm, 20 July, Food Network).
OMG (as they say on both sides of the pond), it was hilarious. We Brits may think we love a BBQ as much as your average Aussie or Yank, but with our incinerated burgers, undercooked bangers and chewy skewers, we've got nothing on this lot. This was barbecuing on a gut-busting scale. The 258 teams gathered in Memphis for the cook-off could prepare anything they liked... as long as it was pork (more specifically: ribs, shoulder or whole hog). And boy, did they take the whole thing seriously.
Boasting names such as The Red Hot Smokers, The Killer Hogs and Jack's Old South, the teams literally went the whole hog to win. Some even started prepping the day before, diligently marinading, massaging in rubs, smoking or even injecting the meat to optimise its flavour and texture.
You'd think they were competing for serious money, not the piddly $3k up for grabs for the category champions and $22k overall winner's prize. There was lots of fighting talk of the "This ain't no corn dog contest, we're making real barbecue here" variety as well as musings over the quality of the "bark" (the skin) and debate among the whole hog contestants over the merits of laying the beast on its side or upside down (the first looks better but the second captures the juices).
The Americans don't do irony, of course, and it was without any that one of the Red Hot Smokers described the shoulder meat to the judge as "tender like a mother's love" while the Killer Hogs were confident they had impressed their judge when they noted "you could see his eyes roll back a little bit". They all looked scarily intense and David 'Doby' Hair (one of the Jack's Old South team) was so excitable they had to subtitle the poor bloke.
In the end, though, he was on the overall winning team. So going the whole hog clearly paid off.
More from this column
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