Susie Bulloch had home court advantage going into the new Food Network competition “Pitmasters,” which brought top barbecue cooks to southern Utah for a weeklong live fire-cooking battle. But that doesn’t mean it was all smooth sailing for the founder of the online BBQ empire Hey Grill, Hey.
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In fact, during the premiere episode, Bulloch’s team was one of a few to have grill temperature issues as they navigated a 10-hour cooking challenge in a remote area with an elevation of over 5,000 feet.
Being close to home did bring at least one major benefit early on, though: the ability to withstand altitude sickness.
Here’s a look at how Bulloch fared in the first round — and if she’s moving forward in the competition.
‘This is not Mississippi’
“Pitmasters” set up camp in a remote spot near St. George for filming.
“Welcome, Pitmasters, to the absolute middle of nowhere,” host Andrew Zimmern told the cooks as they arrived.
In the mountains — with an elevation of 5,243 feet, according to the show — the teams were required to build their own barbecue pits and get set up for a week of intense competition.
The first challenge of the competition was to create a family-style BBQ platter that could feed the show’s judges and the competitors. The teams had 10 hours to create two proteins and at least one side.
Throughout the challenge, cooking outdoors at that elevation proved to be a struggle for some of the competitors.
“This is not Mississippi,” Leslie Roark Scott, who comes from a family with a deep history of barbecuing, said with a laugh. At one point, she actually had to hand the reins over to her son, Jacob, while she received assistance from a medic.
“This altitude kicked my tail this morning,” she said.
For Bulloch, a St. George resident, the altitude wasn’t a big deal. But the combination of elevation and weather did end up creating a dilemma in the kitchen.
A struggle in the kitchen — and popular mac and cheese
At one point during the hourslong challenge, Bulloch and her friend and teammate Christie Vanover couldn’t get the internal temperature of their candied pork belly to rise. According to Bulloch’s post on her website about the episode, Vanover made the decision to use the Texas Crutch method, which involves wrapping up the meat.
“Honestly, that save might be the whole reason this dish made it to the judges at all,” Bulloch wrote.
For their family platter, Bulloch and Vanover also prepared beef ribs, a green salad and macaroni and cheese — which is one of Bulloch’s specialties.
“I don’t do a ton of high-end chef-y food,” Bulloch said during the episode. “A lot of my stuff pulls from the backyard — what I grew up eating, what I love serving my family. Yes, this is an extreme scenario, but the food that we’re cooking, you could probably actually recreate in your own backyard.”
Bulloch noted that her smoked mac and cheese recipe is highly ranked online.
“If you actually Googled smoked mac and cheese, my recipe is at the top of the internet,” she said during the episode.
For the first round of competition, though, she chose to make her smoked poblano shells and white cheddar mac and cheese.
Once the 10 hours were up, the nine teams gathered at a table to eat each other’s food — and receive feedback from the expert judges.
Bulloch, who is the youngest of six kids, joked that it was “a normal family dinner” for her.
While the judges praised Bulloch and Vanover for using different techniques and cooking styles, they noted it wasn’t their favorite preparation. In the end, the team ended up placing in the bottom two, along with Leslie Roark Scott and her son, Jacob, who had good flavor but undercooked chicken.
The judges noted that the scores were close all around, but ultimately eliminated the mother-and-son duo from the competition. Grecia and Esaul Ramos, a husband-and-wife team from Texas, won the first challenge.
The next episode, which airs Monday, tasks the eight remaining teams with utilizing three different live-fire techniques in their cooking: underground, on the coals and hanging above the fire.
“Pitmasters” airs Mondays at 8:30 p.m. MDT on Food Network. It is available for streaming the following day on HBO Max.
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