UPDATED WITH STORY: In barbecue competition, you only get one bite

Bob Zannini found that, as the years went, barbecue cooking looked better as a hobby.

“It’s an old man’s sport,” said Zannini, 69, of Lafayette. “A lot of athletic things I used to do I don’t do anymore.

“At least with this I can eat,” Zannini said as he basted chicken on a grill Saturday at the Bayou BBQ Bash under the bridge in Morgan City. “My family loves my leftovers.”

Zannini was one of an expected 40 competitors in the Bash, a competition sanctioned by the Barbeque Competitors Alliance. The St. Mary Chamber event, run by the Marine Corps League’s St. Mary Detachment. Along with the barbecue competition, the Bash offered food and drink, live music, arts and crafts, and, for the first time, a car show.

Zannini took his hobby to the next level by entering competitions. He’s won a grand championship and some reserve championships along the way.

And he’s learned a lesson.

“Competition barbecue and backyard barbecue are two different things,” Zannini said. “With competition barbecue, you get one bite.”

That’s the bite a judge, probably a volunteer judge, gets in order to grade a chef’s work. So the chef has to wow the judge with the chicken’s taste and texture.

“It’s finding a happy balance,” Zannini said. “You hope that an everyday person is going to like it.”

Not long after finishing his leg quarter, Zannini packed up it up and took it across the street to the Trinity Episcopal church hall, where the chicken judging was about to begin.

Local volunteer judges were getting instruction from Brian Lipps, a Barbeque Competitors Alliance judge.

The first rule of chicken judge club is don’t talk about chicken at the table. Don’t do anything that might influence other judges, like make an obvious gesture of approval or disapproval after taking a bite.

Take small bites, Lipps advised, especially those volunteers who will go on to judge ribs or brisket later. Big bites fill you up, and that can influence the scores you give.

And if you think your first bite is a perfect 10, but you want to hold off until you taste some more chicken before giving a top grade, don’t, Lipps said. If your sheet contains all 10s, Lipps said, “it’s my job to figure it out.”

A preliminary judging narrowed the field in each category to 10. The final 10 go to another set of judges, seven in the case of the chicken judging, who pick the winners.