BBQ contest carries $10,000 top prize
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 10, 2015 1:50 AM
DUDLEY -- A $10,000 cash prize is waiting for the person who can cook up the best-tasting barbecued pork in Wayne County.
The second-place winner will receive $1,000 and third-place, $500.
Sponsored by Greater St. John Free Will Baptist Church, plans for the barbecue cook-off were announced last year and church officials started working in January to get information out about the event.
So far 40 to 50 people have verbally committed.
"They can be amateurs or professionals -- it doesn't matter," said Dr. William A. Mitchell Jr., church pastor. "If they think they make the best barbecue in North Carolina, then they need to come to this event. The purse will not be cut. I don't care if I have one grill out here or 50 grills, $10,000 is $10,000.
"I like blessing people, so my excitement is going to be who wins it. That is where I get my joy from. The most beautiful thing about it is the $10,000 has been donated. So I have no stress on me whatsoever as far as the money."
Proceeds will be used to help pay for a dining room at the church, which is located at 613 Mitchell Road.
The cook-off is not until Aug. 22, but the registration deadline is July 15 and Mitchell wants to get the word out to drum up excitement and to encourage people to enter.
In case of rain, the cook-off will be held Saturday, Aug. 29.
Each team will be given a ham purchased from Nahunta Pork Center to grill. A blind taste test by judges, who will be restaurant owners and professional cooks, will decide the winner.
"They will cook it with wood or charcoal," Mitchell said. "We decided we wanted to go with the old traditional way of getting that flavor. Set-up is 6 a.m. It takes about three to four hours to cook the ham."
The non-refundable entry fee is $750 per grill, and each team can have as many members as it wants.
"We are hoping to have 100 grills out there," Mitchell said. "We are looking forward to it. We are doing that because of another project of building a dining room. We are hoping that when we build our dining room that we will be able to liquidate our debt when we finish building it.
"We built this church here, over a half-million dollars, but we paid for this church in nine years and three days. We have only been here about 12 years now."
The new dining room building will be about 70 by 120 feet or bigger to seat up to 1,000 people. Mitchell said he is not yet sure of the cost.
Mitchell said his inspiration for the event came from a program on the Food Channel.
"I love to grill, and I love to cook," Mitchell said. "They had a ribeye cook-off one Saturday and I was home. I watched that complete show. It was amazing. I looked at my wife and I said, 'I can do this.'"
In fact, the church sponsored a ribeye cook-off several years ago that carried a $4,000 prize.
Mitchell jokes that he is a pro when it comes to having chicken plate sales. An uncle once asked him how the church paid off its debt so quickly.
"I said chicken sales," Mitchell said. "I said one time I had three chicken sales and raised $10,000. He said, 'What did you say?'"
Mitchell repeated how it had been done.
His uncle wanted to know how much the plates cost.
"I said about $6 or $7," he said. "He said, 'Are you kidding me?' I said, 'No sir.'"
Mitchell said the secret to the success of the sales is simple -- everything is donated from the chickens to the seasoning.
"Then we have straight profit, 100 percent profit," he said. "That is how I do it. It is easy. I am a pro at chicken sales. We did barbecue. We did chitterlings sales, chicken. We just did those repeatedly.
"Then I had the church sowing money into the church also. I had a yellow envelope called a seed envelope. I told them to give me $1 a day. So for seven days at the end they gave me $7 extra. Then when they gave the $7 extra they always paid more because they said the $7 was just a little bit. So sometimes we were able to make double payments on the church. So I have a pretty good gift for raising money. God has given me a lot of wisdom and knowledge to do that."
For more information, call the church 919-734-7030 or send an email to greaterstjohn613@gmail.com.
"This is not the last one," Mitchell said. "I would love to have a contest where the grand prize is $20,000. I'd love to do that."