MEMPHIS — The biggest pig on site at this week's "Super Bowl of Swine" isn't fit for grilling.
It's a monster Hampshire hog sculpted from polymer resin that stands 5 feet at the shoulder and measures 8 feet from synthetic snout to curly tail. It watches over the enormous "hog cookers" that belong to Memphis-based Smoking Pigs BarBQ, one of close to 250 teams crowded almost literally cheek to jowl on the banks of the Mississippi River for the 38th annual Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, which runs today through Saturday in Tom Lee Park.
A signature event of the Memphis in May International Festival, the contest attracts international media, teams from across the U.S. (and a few from around the globe), and close to 80,000 tourists and other visitors, according to Penelope Huston, festival director of marketing.
Poet Carl Sandburg called Chicago the "hog butcher for the world." He might have changed his mind if he had been able to witness the oinkicidal impulses at large here this week, as many tons of ribs, shoulders and whole hogs are basted, grilled and smoked in converted oil drums and other customized barbecue cookers, for the delectation of carnivores with a taste for swine dining.
Reduced to savory constituent parts, the pigs, of course, are silent. This means that most of the squeals that cut through the aromatic smoke are produced by humans, as they react — in pain or pleasure — to the shameless pork puns embraced by the cooking-contest competitors.
Team names include The Notorious P.I.G., The Pit & the Pigulum, Snoutkast, Deez Butts and Me Rub You Longtime.
Down one dusty park pathway is a team calling itself The Hogfather (they'll make you a shoulder you can't refuse). Down another is Dirk Piggler's Porkographic BBQ, a reference to the 1997 movie Boogie Nights, complete with a painting of what appears to be Mark Wahlberg wearing a "Motel Hell" pig head.
Competing in the pork "Shoulder" category, the Not Ready-for-Swine Time Porkers have been part of the barbecue contest from the beginning, when the teams fit under one tent and the event was — in the words of some pig cookers — less "corporate" and more "backyard."
Even so, "there's nothing like it in the world," said Australian Tiny Poliniak, head cook for the Swine Time team, which packs its gear into a 28-foot-long 18-wheeler that, when rolled into Tom Lee Park, functions as headquarters, kitchen and clubhouse.
Introduced to the contest while a tourist, Poliniak was so enamored of the event that for several years he traveled each May from Perth to Memphis — "and that's as far apart as you can get," he said. Eventually, he relocated to suburban Lakeland, the better to enjoy the "camaraderie" that comes with being part of a Memphis in May barbecue team.
For most, participation is not a simple endeavor. Teams begin planning cooking strategies and visual themes months in advance. Some teams spend up to $50,000, and enlist sponsors to cover much of the costs, which include meat, equipment, construction materials and amenities for the team booth, and various event fees (registration, park space, portable-toilet rental, electricity usage, insurance and so on).
Misty Roberson, 36, said her shoulder-cooking team — the Moody Q's — spent about $22,000 last year, with the help of such sponsors as Holliday Flowers and Royal Oak Charcoal. The team's booth this year is "campy," in a literalist meaning of the word: Painted cloth that resembled stone, live plants, a fake campfire and other elements give the booth space the appearance of a campground in a theatrical production.
The elaborate nature of such team themes and the barbecue preparation itself meant that Tom Lee Park on Wednesday seemed as busy as pigs at a trough, as contestants prepared for the rubberneckers and — most important — the judges they will encounter over the three days of the fest. Trucks, vans and trailers carrying all sizes and manners of grills and cookers rumbled slowly along the dirt paths that separated the rows of barbecue booths; these in turn ranged in size from living-room-style spaces to multilevel temporary party homes, with scaffolding, ladders and decks. In one instant, a Jolly Roger blew in the breeze, but with a pig's head and meat cleavers in place of the traditional skull and crossbones.
Still, the meat matters more than the sizzle, even if some cooks are willing to reveal their secrets. Gary Adams — who will celebrate his 60th birthday in Tom Lee Park — said his team, Smoking Pigs BarBQ, injects its shoulders with a marinade that includes salt, sugar, coriander, ground cloves, onion and garlic power and the special ingredient of just one drop — "which has got like 10 million heat units" — of Oleoresin Capsicum, the resin used in police pepper spray. The resin is so spicy, he said, that a team cook who got some on his hands "rubbed his forehead, and a few minutes later his skin was blistered."
Not all the comestibles at the barbecue contest are dangerous or animal-based, however. Mark Nelson of the Redneck Bar-B-Que Express — a whole-hog team with 20 members, each of whom chips in $500 to participate — has found that fresh fruit has its aficionados.
"You need to come back Friday and watch us serving strawberries to the ladies," enthused Nelson, 63. "We've been doing it for years. It's our tradition." (And a long tradition it is: The Redneck Express is one of the contest's founding teams.)
According to Nelson, each strawberry is soaked in vodka and strawberry liqueur, cored, and then filled with Kahlúa and whipped cream. "We tell 'em to open wide, and we drop it in. They love it."
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Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest
Thursday through Saturday at Tom Lee Park.
Admission: $10 at gate.
For more information: memphisinmay.org.
