Food Network Built a Barbecue Show Around the Part That Actually Hurts

Most televised barbecue is a tasting show with a clock bolted on. Pitmasters, which premiered on Food Network in July, is built around the logistics instead: nine two-person teams breaking down a whole hog and then cooking and serving four essential proteins on a nonstop rolling schedule, for up to $50,000.

That format choice is the interesting one. Breaking down a hog is the skill that separates people who cook barbecue from people who buy barbecue cuts, and a rolling schedule reproduces the real problem of a competition weekend, which is not any single cook but managing four of them at different stages with one fire and no sleep.

The judging panel is unusually credentialed for the genre, with Andrew Zimmern alongside Jess Pryles, Moe Cason and Ernest Servantes. Competition pitmasters judging competition pitmasters produces different notes than a celebrity palate does, and the criticism lands harder for it.

It sits in a small field. Barbecue television has mostly been travelogue, with a host driving between joints being impressed. A show that makes people cook under the conditions the sport actually imposes is closer to what the audience for this section already watches survival shows for: competence under pressure, filmed honestly.