Returning to Asheboro

Pigs and Pedals in Asheboro, NC, continues to impress me as a top-notch and well-organized event. Now in its fifth year, it has improved each year and succeeded in bringing crowds into the downtown area on the first weekend in August.

Cooking teams set up in downtown Asheboro near the park stage.

In addition to the barbecue competition, the festival again this year included a show of antique cars that kept the crowds busy looking at the historic vehicles on display before they voted in the people’s choice contest for one of the 20 cooking teams that participated. Music and other entertainment acts were also featured on the park stage.

Judges listen as contest organizers explain procedures.

For the second time, a kids’ barbecue competition was part of the weekend and added a youthful component to the cookoff. In addition, a new event was a “pig” eating contest — the winner ate the most cupcakes decorated with pig “faces” in five minutes.

Judging took place in The Exchange, a banquet facility, while the car show was occurring outside.

For the barbecue cookoff, 48 teams vied for top honors and a share of the $12,000 in prize money. Rather than being a judge this year, I was asked to be a table captain, which means presenting and distributing barbecue entries to the judges at the table where I was assigned and then collecting their scores after they had evaluated the entries. Although I missed being a judge, I did sample several entries and compared my judgments with the scores turned in. I was also shadowed by a “new” table captain who had just been certified after completing the required training and was able to answer her questions as we performed our tasks.

BBQ samples were prepared for the people's choice contest.

In addition to several master judges, the table included the pitmaster for Speaks for Itself, a competition cooking team that enters about eight contest annually. He is certified and judges at about three other events each year to experience how entries are judged and to hone his competitive skills. Because events sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society use a “blind judging” process, judges do not know which teams they evaluate. However, being both a judge and cook may explain the success that his team achieved at the Jiggy with the Piggy cookoff in Kannapolis in 2017 when it placed third out of 75 teams in the pork category and won fourth place overall.

Pigs and Pedals keeps downtown Asheboro busy during the first weekend in August.

Working with the table of judges and a new table captain was a refreshing change of pace and made Pigs and Pedals an enjoyable experience again this year.