Big Racks Barbecue

06/18/2026

06/16/2026

Who has better BBQ - Texas or Kansas?

Time to place your bets. Official results posted tomorrow.

06/15/2026

Day 2 of Bring'n Home the Bacon wrapped up yesterday. We had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and congratulating their achievements at awards.

We liked our day 1 entries so didnt change much for day 2 outside of ribs. Came with a plan to run 3 different recipes so stuck with the plan and were happy with our boxes. Results:

28th chicken - sticking with the recipe
13th ribs
3rd pork
19th brisket - 2nd on table

9th overall

Huge congrats to Janky Leg for winning GC and Cross Rifle for RGC. Also our friend Fender Bender BBQ for winning backyard GC.

Thanks to Jason Halterman for bringing meat up from Korte Meat Processing and Berg's BBQ for grabbing us some meat from White Bear Butchery- A Flicker Meat Company for us to compete with.

We are off for a month so looking forward to some home cooking.

Thanks to our great sponsors:

Heath Riles BBQ
Smokey Woods
Springer Mountain Farms
Remote Tax Services
The Good Charcoal Company
ThermoWorks
Whiskey Creek BBQ

06/14/2026

Posted early this morning saying if our Snake River Farms brisket didn't walk - it wasn't the meat. Fortunately the cook came to play.

We closed the lids on what we thought were 4 good boxes but the judges only liked brisket. Long night of prep then we are going to back to these judges.

Congrats to Sassy Smoke BBQ on winning the backyard GC.

Heath Riles BBQ
Smokey Woods
ThermoWorks
The Good Charcoal Company
Remote Tax Services
Whiskey Creek BBQ
Springer Mountain Farms

06/13/2026

This Snake River Farms brisket is a hammer 🔨 Can't blame the meat today.

Jay Craig patio XL
Heath Riles BBQ rubs

06/13/2026

Decided to give the new bar recipe a shot - ribs were a bit tight and scoring seemed to agree. They did like the "No BH" recipe and finished 8th with a killer taste score.

Tomorrow switching back to my OG recipe I havent cooked in ~2 years then we will decide what to do Sunday.

4am will come quickly.

Heath Riles BBQ

The Good Charcoal Company
Smokey Woods BBQ
Gateway Drum Smokers

06/12/2026

on the Heath Riles BBQ Competition Gateway Drum Smokers at Bring'n Home the Bacon

Giving a new recipe a shot tonight with the plan to run something different this weekend.

Good luck to everyone cooking this weekend.

06/10/2026

Trip down memory lane.....

2022 we made our first trip to Bring'n Home the Bacon (BHTB) in the fall when they had a fall contest. That event was the first time we cooked under the BIG RACKS BBQ name and it was also the first time we had earned BBQ awards highlighted by my wife winning the chili contest. That motivated us to spend a lot of time in below 0* temp operating and learning our Gateway Drum Smokers.

Excited to put our practice to work we started the next year driving down to KC and won our first Grand Championship (GC) at the backyard American Royal.

That summer we returned to BHTB and had one of our best memories finishing 1st chicken, 2nd ribs - narrowly beating our friend Alan who finished 2nd chicken and 1st ribs to claim our 2nd career GC. Cool looking at this list 4 years later knowing that most of these teams are still competing and we will see many of them this weekend.

We didn't have as much luck last year in our masters debut at this contest but excited to give it another shot this year.

06/09/2026

Smokey Woods BBQ Ultimate Blend pellets are laying down some flavor on these Prairie Fresh babyback ribs.

The Traeger Grills Ironwood 885 is making this a painless workday cook.