Presque Isle and Fort Fairfield Barbecue Masters Take Home Top Barbecue Trophies

After spending all night cooking up feasts, five barbecue groups took home trophies at the Chamber’s Smokin’ BBQ Cook-off competition on Saturday.

The sixth annual event, sponsored by the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce, took place on the first day of the Maine Potato Blossom Festival in Fort Fairfield, drawing cooks from the county and beyond.

J&R Barbecue of Presque Isle and Double D BBQ of Fort Fairfield each took home five first-place finishes, while DNA BBQ of Caribou and Ashland took home four. Smokey Bears BBQ of Easton Center took home two trophies, and another went to Cousin’s Que of Orrington.

Saturday was sunny and warm, and the town was bustling with a yard sale, a car wash for volunteers and sporting events. Barbecues featured ribs, pulled pork, chicken and brisket, along with other dishes like beans and macaroni and cheese.

Amidst tantalizing aromas, people filled the food court this afternoon for a public tasting and to vote for their favorite in the People’s Choice category.

Double D BBQ, run by owner Dereck Dufour, took home the top spot in People’s Choice. J&R Barbecue, with chef Rob Thibeault, came in second.

For the Chef’s Choice award, each pitmaster prepared a signature dish. First-place winner J&R prepared a burger on a pretzel bun with honey bacon jam. DNA, which includes Dan Veazie of Ashland and Aaron Libby of Caribou, finished second, with an apple-glazed pork belly. Double D took third with a boneless turkey breast topped with a cranberry glaze.

The pit masters were excited but tired by the end of the competition. And yes, Thibeault said, they really do stay up all night.

“Nobody really sleeps,” he said. “We do it for the camaraderie. It’s a lot of fun.”

For Double D, it’s a team effort. Dereck and his wife Meagan are joined by his parents, Donald and Barb Dufour, and friends Shawn Rogers and Aaron Tysinger. They opened a food truck this year, which they set up on Fort Fairfield’s Main Street. This is their third year participating in the cooking competition.

His first attempt at barbecue wasn’t great, Dereck Dufour said.

“One day I came home with a pellet smoker and started practicing,” he said. “I worked on recipes and finally came up with a good one and stuck with it.”

He and his father built their smokehouse in 2021, finishing it about two weeks before that year’s cooking competition. They won trophies that year and have a great time sharing their food, he said.

Tom Peers is the executive chef at Smokey Bears, which opened in Easton Center last month. He credits Chris Perkins of Fort Fairfield, who competed in the first cooking competition in 2018, with getting it started.

“He mentioned he was doing it and that’s what got us started,” Peers said. “Smokey Bears won 10 trophies at the competition and we’re hoping to win even more today.”

Truck drivers Veazie and Libby have been competing in the competition for six years. They arrived Friday afternoon for the all-night cooking frenzy. It’s the long cooking time that makes barbecue so good, Libby said.

“It destroys all the little fibers in the meat when you cook it low and slow,” he said.

Matt Soucy of Orrington is part of Cousin’s Que of Maine and Millbury, Massachusetts.

“We’re amateurs, I guess you’d say,” he said. “We just do competitive barbecues. We start in Florida in the winter and do as many as we can in New England in the summer.”

Other trophy winners were, for chicken: 1st, Smokey Bears; 2nd, Double D; and 3rd, J&R. Ribs: 1st, J&R; 2nd, Smokey Bears; and 3rd, DNA. Pork: 1st, Double D; 2nd, J&R; and 3rd, DNA. And for brisket: 1st, DNA; 2nd, Cousin’s Que; and 3rd, Double D.