Shane Draper Barbecue Demos at 2012 Kentucky State BBQ Festival

Shane Draper of Draper’s BBQ will be firing up the barbecue demos at this year’s Kentucky State BBQ Festival.

As CEO of Draper’s BBQ Sauce, Shane is a veteran of the BBQ business and has participated in numerous barbecue competitions throughout the USA. He has competed in the last 3 Memphis in May World Championships (the last 2 in whole hog) as part of Team Tucker Cooker.

Each year Draper’s BBQ Sauce has finished very well there but in his words, “its really more about the experience and getting compete at the hardest pig event out there that’s the big deal for us.”

Shane continues, “Really our path with competitions got diverted pretty early on with the sauce thing. As soon as it started having success and looked like a viable company we pulled back on competing and focused more on the sauce and rub business. I have spent more time helping teams with their profiles and dialing them in so they can win with our stuff than I have done for myself. We always finish well when we compete as Draper’s BBQ and I’m proud of that. It is indeed high time though that competing start getting top billing again so we can pull down some more hardware.”

The videos on this page were shot at Memphis in May this year by Thermoworks as part of an online ad campaign they did. In Shane’s words, “I looked like hell after being away for 2+ days.” 🙂

What Shane has put together for demo’ing at the Kentucky State BBQ Festival is a course that focuses on some basics but talks about the 3 core principles of bbq that we live by: Salt, Smoke and Meat.

Salt representing anything you add to the meat (other than smoke) that adds flavor. IE: rubs, sugar, pepper, injections, brines, cures, sauce, etc.
Smoke represents any aspect that deals with the time, temp, smoke and heat of the cooking process.
Meat represents the basics of deciphering the fat content of a piece of meat, how it should be cooked (direct heat, grilled, smoked, indirect, etc) and to what internal temp.

“I really believe when a newby get’s started to get them into relying on a thermometer until they can develop that sixth sense and gut feel for bbq.”

Shane is scheduled to do five demos at the Festival.

On Saturday, September 8th, he will be doing demos on:

Chicken (Competition vs Whole vs Spatchcocked)
Ribs (Baby Backs and Spare Ribs)
Butts and Shoulder (Pork Barbecue)
Brisket (What Texas BBQ is all about)

Sunday, September 9th will feature:

Tailgating on the pit (chicken wings, moink balls, bacon explosion)
Holiday on the pit (Turkey 2 ways and Ham) Turkey will be whole and spatchcocked.

For the demo’s themselves, Shane will lay these principles (Sale, Smoke and Meat) over demos for Chicken, Ribs, Butts/Shoulders, Brisket, Tailgating foods (Moink Balls, Fattys, Wings, Bacon Explosion) and Holidays on the Pit (Turkeys and Hams).

Just a little bit of Shane’s barbeque resumé:

Competed in Memphis in May World Championship BBQ Contest last 3 years. Finishing 12th in sauce (2010), 6th in sauce (2011), 16th Whole Hog (2012)
Named in top 5 sauces and rubs for 2011 by Scott Roberts
Currently #12 on BBQ Superstars Top 100 BBQ Sauces in the World
Currently #19 on BBQ Superstars Top 100 BBQ Rubs in the World
5 Star sauce on bbqsaucereviews.com
Best sauce BBQ on the River 2011, 3rd Whole Hog, raised $22,000 for Childwatch (local child advocacy center)
Host of Gettin’ Sauced with Draper’s BBQ on Blogtalkradio
Draper’s BBQ website – click here Draper’s BBQ