INTRODUCTION

It’s All About Family

I’M MOE CASON, NICE TO MEET YOU. Maybe you’ve seen my face on a jar of barbecue sauce or on my National Geographic television series, World of Flavor With Big Moe Cason. Maybe you know me best as a competition barbecue pitmaster. All of that is true. And yes, it’s still crazy to me that after more than 20 years working the night shift at a water company in Des Moines, Iowa, my full-time job is now barbecue. I still get giddy every day.

I taught myself everything there is to know about barbecue, and I can teach you, too.

But first I have to give credit to my grandmother Margaret; my mother, Mary; and my wife of 30 years, Nena. They each play a role in how I got here.

I was born, bred, and corn-fed in Des Moines. My grandmother had 17 children. Our family was a tight-knit squad, which is not to say there wasn’t drama. But no matter the strife among cousins and aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, when we had a cookout, all the problems drifted away. Because my grandmother—well, she was Queen Bee. Everybody respected Margaret. She was the general. You knew not to act up or sideways anywhere around her—she would have none of that. At our family cookouts, we would whip up hot dogs, hamburgers, and pork steaks in the backyard or at a park on an old steel grill that sat on concrete. I still remember those wonderful smells. I was just drawn to them like a magnet.

My mom worked two jobs. So when we got out of school, my sister and I would go to my grandma’s house until my mom got home from work. Everything my grandma made, she made from scratch. She didn’t have a lot of money, and nothing she cooked was crazy or fancy. It was just good. I would ask my grandmother, “Hey, what’s in this?” or “What’s that?” And she would say, “Boy, I don’t got this written down!” When my grandmother passed, so did most of her recipes; none of her 17 kids had written anything down. My mom was one of her daughters who got a sense of her food.

NO ONE’S GOING TO OUTHUSTLE ME. YOU MAY BE MORE TALENTED THAN ME. YOU MAY COOK BETTER BRISKET THAN ME. BUT YOU AIN’T GONNA OUTWORK ME.

I did a lot of my early experimentation on my mom’s old, extremely homemade 55-gallon drum pit. I’ve always been fascinated with putting meat on a grill and watching it transform from something raw into something beautiful, with mouthwatering smells and colors, tastes and textures.

My mom wasn’t going out and buying me steaks. I would sometimes go hunting and kill a squirrel or a rabbit, or I would go down to the river and catch a sunfish, maybe a bass, and cut it up. In the kitchen I’d grab my mom’s spices and make little concoctions. I would season up these fish fillets with cinnamon and cardamom. Things that I would never do today. I would cook it, maybe burn it. Then I would taste it, and it would be straight garbage. But you gotta burn some crap before you get it right.

Barbecue Beginnings

I met my wife right after I left the Navy. After we got our first apartment together, I immediately bought a little Brinkmann grill from Walmart. I cooked on it so much that I put a hole in the deck.

Meanwhile a guy across the street had a nice, fancy offset pit smoker. He was really proud of it; he thought he was a king snake. He would talk about his rub and his sauce, and you could tell he thought he was better than me. I’m a humble dude, but I know what I’m putting down, and I have a competitive streak in me. So one day I cooked a brisket on my cheap little Brinkmann. I went over to his yard and offered him some of my brisket. I still remember the look on his face. He knew right then and there: Game over.

At the time, my wife worked for the local phone company and I worked for the water company. We were living paycheck to paycheck. Then I started seeing these barbecue competitions on TV. I was intrigued.

I wanted to join one of these barbecue competitions, and there just happened to be one right in Des Moines, put on by the National Pork Board. But I didn’t have the money for a proper pit. So my wife and I decided to flip a house. It took me a whole year to remodel it. It sat for a week on the market and then sold for a nice profit. I remember the real estate agent bringing me that check—I grinned from ear to ear. Hell to the yeah! I was able to buy my first little trailer with a pit on it. The guy across the street looked all torn up when he saw it. Yep, it’s called progression, son.

Game On

I entered my first barbecue competition in June 2006 and knew instantly this was where I needed to be. What started out as a hobby quickly became a way of life. I was hungry to learn more about this craft. I did my research on the origins of barbecue, dating back to Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean peoples who cooked over dug-out pits. Enslaved people used to take the undesirable cuts of meats discarded from their owners and turn them into delicious food. I had to honor this rich tradition and make sure I cooked with integrity.

When I got started in the competition circuit, I was big into figuring everything out myself so that win, lose, or draw, the food was me. That’s the way I was raised. If I told my grandmother that I paid a guy $700 for a barbecue class, she would have said, “You out your damn mind. Get out in the backyard and cook!” This was in me.

It’s common for barbecue competitors to buy rubs and sauces off the shelf. But I wanted to make my own flavors. I can’t tell you how many rubs I have made in my kitchen. I’ve got a notebook full of my old recipes and notes, plus some crumbs and stains. I would go to Penzeys (our local spice shop) and get raw fresh pepper and garlic and spices—the good stuff, not cheap. My wife would get so upset with all the bags of stuff that I was never going to use up.

All this time, I was still working the overnight shift at the water company. I would get off work at seven in the morning on Friday and drive to wherever the next competition was—sometimes hours and hours away. On Sunday, I’d drive home to get to work by 11 p.m. This was my routine almost every weekend for 10 years.

Competition is a tough world, but I believed in myself. I just kept working my jelly. No one’s going to outhustle me. You may be more talented than me. You may cook better brisket than me. But you ain’t gonna outwork me.

I always believed that the work you put in is what you’re gonna get out. Just like when I jumped in my truck and drove from Des Moines down to the corporate office of Academy Sports + Outdoors in Katy, Texas. They wanted to put my rubs and sauces in 20 stores in the test market. After I talked to those buyers for 10 minutes, they put my sauces and rubs into all 300 stores. That was the first step of being able to retire from the water company and spend my days making, thinking about, and teaching barbecue.

Since starting in competitions in 2006, I’ve competed in more than 260 contests across more than 35 states. I’ve placed for my chicken, ribs, pork, and brisket (including three perfect scores), and have won multiple Grand and Reserve Grand Championships. I now teach barbecue classes and compete in competitions all over the world.

Passing the Torch

This book is for the everyday guy or gal. These recipes are a collection of my family favorites—including a few recipes from my wife and daughters. Most of these recipes I’ve made from memory for years and years. This cookbook is the first time we’ve officially written them down.

My goal is to give you your new go-to recipe for mac and cheese or baked beans or brisket. I hope your family eats and loves this food, and maybe they’ll pass on a recipe to their family and friends, and it keeps on going. Then you’d be legendary in your community, all because of what my wife and I do. That, to me, is helping the human condition. If I took a dirt nap tomorrow, I can feel happy knowing that I left behind something good.

I hope my family recipes become your family recipes.