Arkansas 4-H members put chops to the test at state barbecue contest

By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture

ROGERS, Ark. — Fifteen Arkansas 4-H members from 13 counties brought the heat at the 4-H State Barbecue Cook-Off, with first-place winners in chicken and turkey barbecue advancing to the national competition in Louisville, Kentucky, this fall.

BRING THE HEAT — Arkansas 4-H members tested their grilling skills at the Arkansas 4-H State Barbecue Cook-Off, held June 21-22 in Rogers at the 64th Annual Poultry Festival. Sarah Lamb, 18, was the first-place chicken barbecue winner, and Laney Slate, 18, was the first-place turkey barbecue winner. (Lamb pictured front row, right middle; Slate pictured front row, left middle. Division of Agriculture photo.) 

The contest was held June 21-22 in Rogers at the 64th Annual Poultry Festival, hosted by The Poultry Federation. Sarah Lamb, 18, was the first-place chicken barbecue winner, and Laney Slate, 18, was the first-place turkey barbecue winner. Lamb and Slate will advance to compete at the national contest, which will be held at the National 4-H Poultry and Egg Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, from Nov. 20-21.

Andrew Bolton, extension instructor of poultry science for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said the contest teaches participants important life skills.

“Food prep and food safety being first and foremost, from good sanitation practices to being conscious of the correct temperature that different meats need to reach to be safely cooked,” Bolton said. “This contest also pushes these youth to do research into the poultry industry, as well as some healthy living aspects as to why proteins like chicken and turkey are important.

Bolton said participants have also gained confidence in “their own abilities to get a grill lit, food prepped and then cooked all on their own.”

“They’ve learned how to be great critical thinkers in how they have developed their own sauces, marinades and rubs,” Bolton said. “I have also seen their creativity flourish when designing posters as part of their presentations on their choice of meat.”

Lamb has been a member of Arkansas 4-H in Howard County since she was five years old, competing in her county and district barbecue contests for the past four years. This year, she qualified for the state contest for the first time. Lamb attributes this success to changing up her seasoning blend, which remains a secret.

“I practice two times a month, and when I practice at home, I use a lot of different seasonings to figure out which ones I like,” Lamb said.

Slate has been a member of the Dayton 4-H Club in Sebastian County for nine years and began competing in the 4-H barbecue contest at the county level when she was nine years old. In 2021, she won first place in chicken barbecue at the state contest and advanced to the national level, where she placed fourth. Because she made it to the national competition with chicken barbecue, she wasn’t allowed to compete in the same category again, so she switched to turkey burgers for the 2024 competition.

“This year I had to practice a lot more, because the cooking process for turkey burgers versus a whole chicken is very different,” Slate said. “It’s almost two hours to cook a chicken, versus 30-45 minutes for the burgers. I had to learn that it’s okay for it to not take forever.

“With the burgers, you have to put in the ingredients to flavor it and patty it yourself, so finding the right consistency was difficult at first,” Slate said. “But once I got that down, I felt like it was fine.”

Practice and preparation

Lamb’s father taught her how to cook on a charcoal grill when she was 10 years old. When she learned the state contest would feature charcoal grills, she was relieved.

“It does take a lot of patience,” she said. “I’m the only one in my family who can do it.”

For her technique, Lamb said it’s important not to fuss over the chicken.

“I’ve learned to shut the lid and not look at my chicken for about 20 minutes, then look and see where the temperature falls,” she said. “To make it juicier, you barely touch it.”

Slate said that for her turkey burgers, breadcrumbs were key.

“You have to be careful because if you add too many, it dries them out and they fall apart when you cook them,” Slate said. “Finding the right ratio of breadcrumbs to the meat was the tricky part.”

Slate said she hopes to place within the top five at the national competition. She plans to work on her speech presentation, a significant percentage of contestants’ scores, in the meantime.

Slate said her favorite part of participating in the barbecue contest has been making new friends.

“I’ve met a lot of people who the only thing we have in common is cooking in that contest,” Slate said. “Some people I met in 2021, back at the national event, I still talk to them to this day. So, I’ve just enjoyed the friendships and people you meet along the way.”

Lamb said her 4-H record book — where 4-H members log all projects, contests, activities, events and skill development — has focused on food and nutrition, which she plans to pursue as a career.

“I’m going to culinary school a year from now because I would love to have my own bakery,” Lamb said. “It’ll be a bakery and a café, where I could serve food and sweets.”

For her fellow 4-H members interested in testing and improving their own barbecue skills, Lamb said she advises not to fear the grill.

“Don’t be intimidated by the grill, because it’s just a grill,” she said. “And if something happens, you’ll always have somebody to help you. When you get to know it, it’s more fun, because you can do anything on a grill.”

Slate said it’s also important for competitors to be able to adjust to circumstances out of their control.

“Being able to think quick on my feet has been important,” Slate said. “Since we cook outside, I’ve had to cook in the rain, the sleet and the snow. At the national level, it started sleeting and snowing on us, and then after we got done cooking, the sun came out. So, you never really know, and you just have to be prepared.”

The Arkansas 4-H youth development program is operated by the Cooperative Extension Service, the outreach arm of the Division of Agriculture. To learn more about Arkansas 4-H, visit 4h.uada.edu.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. 

Arkansas 4-H members bring the heat to state barbecue contest, advance to nationals

By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture

ROGERS, Ark. — Sixteen Arkansas youth put their grilling chops to the test at the 4-H State Barbecue Cook-Off, and the first-place winners in chicken and turkey barbecue will advance to the national competition in Louisville, Kentucky.

WINNER WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER — Jeremiah Moix, 18, took first place in the chicken barbecue category with a recipe that focused on his grilling technique and used hickory chips to infuse the chicken with smoky flavor. (Photo submitted by the Moix family.)

The contest was held June 10 in Rogers at the 63rd Annual Poultry Festival, hosted by The Poultry Federation. Jeremiah Moix, 18, was the first-place chicken barbecue winner, and Blakley Thompson, 14, was the first-place turkey barbecue winner. Moix and Thompson will advance to the national competition, which will be held at the National 4-H Poultry and Egg Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, from Nov. 15-16.

Moix has been a member of the Paron Lion’s Pride 4-H Club in Saline County for three years and has competed in the barbecue competition each year since joining.

“I’ve grown up watching my dad grill, so I already knew some basics,” Moix said. “It just sounded like a fun thing to do. We’d never cooked on charcoal, so I had to learn different techniques for that, and I got to learn how to cook chicken.”

Thompson has been a member of Clark County 4-H since he was 5 years old. Thompson said he also shows goats and lambs at the national level. This was his first year competing at the state level of the barbecue contest.

“I just fell in love with turkey because I like the taste of it, and I also like to turkey hunt,” Thompson said. “Turkey is all-around my favorite bird.”

The road to state

Sara Orlowski, assistant professor and extension poultry specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, coordinates the district and state 4-H barbecue contests. She said 4-H members first compete in the barbecue contest at the county level, starting in March and April. Those winners advance to the district level in one of four district barbecue contests held in Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Arkadelphia and Little Rock. Only 4-H’ers aged 14 and older can move on to the state-level contest.

“One of the big draws is that we hold the state barbecue contest for the 4-H kids at the Poultry Festival,” Orlowski said. “They grill in the morning, and then they spend the rest of the day at the festival. There’s usually a concert at night that the kids get a ticket to go to, so it’s a big weekend for them. They get to come up to Rogers and compete, but also have some fun afterward.”

At the county and district level, participants bring their own grills, but for the 16 youths who qualify for the state competition, a grill is provided for each of them. They then get to take that grill home with them as part of their reward for making it to the state level.

Orlowski said contestants are judged not only on the taste of their barbecue, but also on their preparation and food safety skills.

“There’s a section that they’re scored on before the product is even tasted,” she said. “They’re judged on how well they can light their charcoal grill, how they control their fire and how they put on sauces and check temperatures.”

Contestants also must prepare a trifold poster board with information about safe food handling and the poultry industry, as well as nutritional facts about their chosen meat. This accounts for a quarter of a contestant’s overall score.

Practice makes perfect

Moix said he begins preparing for the county barbecue contest early in the spring.

“Usually at the start of the season I probably haven’t grilled in a while, so for my first practice, I’ll light up the grill outside and I’ll do my food prep in the home kitchen,” Moix said. “But by the time of my last practice before the competition, I have everything set up outside. I’m trying to simulate the competition as much as I can. I come inside to get the chicken and take it outside to prepare it, just like I would in the competition, and I’m timing myself.”

Contestants are allotted two and a half hours from the time they light their grill to the presentation of their dish to the judges.

Moix said his family has tasted many versions of his chicken recipe and provided plenty of feedback.

“My harshest critics are my siblings,” Moix said. “I get pretty immediate feedback — they’ll tell me too much seasoning, or not enough seasoning, or I didn’t get enough smoke in this part of the meat.”

Thompson said that after qualifying in his county competition, he practiced every week for the district contest.

“I worked on getting my timing right,” Thompson said. “I marinated my turkey for the first hour while my fire was getting ready. And I actually didn’t put my turkey on the grates, I put foil down on the grates and then put my turkey on top of that. This was to render the spices and the vegetables that were on the turkey into it, to make it a better-tasting turkey.”

Moix said that over the years he’s competed in the barbecue contest, his recipe hasn’t changed much, but his technique has.

“What I try to go for is a very simple seasoning that’s not very strong or overpowering, but I add some hickory chips to the smoke,” he said. “Getting that into the chicken — which is sometimes harder to do than perfecting your seasoning — to keep it nice and moist, and get crispy skin without burning the skin, that’s really what I’m practicing each time. It’s a simple, good recipe, and it lets my actual grilling technique show through.”

Thompson said that on a trip to Puerto Rico with his family, they met a soldier who worked as a commercial chef, who influenced the flavors Thompson chose for his turkey recipe.

“I’ve always wanted to meet with a chef who’s been all over the country, so my recipe came from Puerto Rico,” he said. “We learned of these flavors from him and then tried them, and it improved the turkey in so many ways.”

The key to Thompson’s recipe is using lots of white vinegar in the marinade, which he says opens the pores of the meat and allows for garlic and peppers to infuse their flavors into the turkey.

Preparing for nationals

Moix said that at the national barbecue contest, competitors must give a 10-minute presentation on the poultry industry and respond to questions from judges.

“It’s a step up from the poster board, and then you have to go grill,” he said. “I’ve taken some speech classes in high school, so I’m pretty confident on that part.”

Thompson said he’s most looking forward to participating in the competition side of the National 4-H Poultry and Egg Conference, as in previous years he’s shown goats and lambs.

“I’m super excited to learn from other people who are big into this,” Thompson said. “Even at the state competition, people are like, ‘Oh, I’ve been here eight times,’ and it’s my first year. I’m excited to meet with the kids who are cooking those chicken and turkeys and have been there in past years and won that contest, to see what it does for you and how it helps.”

For their fellow 4-H’ers interested in the barbecue contest, Moix and Thompson both recommended plenty of practice and keeping a cool head during the competition.

“Every now and then I see people who have barely practiced, and they can sometimes do well based on luck, but if you want to perform well consistently, practice,” Moix said. “Know how much charcoal you’re going to use, know how much seasoning you’re going to use, so that at the competition, it just feels natural and like you’re cooking at home.”

The Arkansas 4-H youth development program is operated by the Cooperative Extension Service, the outreach arm of the Division of Agriculture.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.