Method behind the magic: Carson City Barbecue competes in Sparks

Ribs are serious business in Northern Nevada this time of year.

Well over 200,000 pounds of St. Louis style pig are trucked in to feed about 600,000 hungry rib-eaters converging upon Victorian Square in Sparks for the annual Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook Off, now in its 28th year.

In a word, the event is massive, boasting the largest barbecue draw worldwide and is easily the largest rib cook-off in the United States, said Carson City Barbecue co-owner Phil Hyatt.

Each of the 19 years it has competed, Carson City Barbecue is counted among the cook-off's top grillers, having garnered seven trophies in that time.

Hyatt, together with his partner, Duane Felker, have won the distinction of Best Ribs twice, People's Choice twice, and Best Sauce three times.

Considering that each and every competitor at the world's largest barbecue -- arguably the most exclusive nationwide cook-off invitational -- is a perennial award-winner elsewhere at other events around the country, that's really saying something.

"This is an invitational, and just to be invited is a privilege," Hyatt said. "It's a medal on your wall."

Carson City Barbecue is a heavyweight these days in any grilling competition, and especially at the Nugget's yearly event.

But getting to this point wasn't easy for Hyatt and Felker, who got their big break in 1999 when they won their first of seven straight rib titles at the Best On the Mountain Rib Cook Off at Lake Tahoe.

"It took us four years of putting in applications and working for other vendors, getting to know the people, before we got our first invitation," said Hyatt, who spent two years working for a vendor at the cook-off. So did Felker.

During those years, they did a lot of the grunt work required behind the counter, from cutting racks and loading the cookers with thousands of pounds of pig.

There have been years, Hyatt said, when he has literally worked constantly for 12-18 hours a day with little to no breaks, cutting ribs as fast as they were received.

"We came in here, busted our butts, got to know all the cookers, went to cooks meetings, and rubbed elbows with everybody to get to know these people," Hyatt said.

Although Carson City Barbecue is among the competition's best today, Hyatt and Felker still bust their humps day in and day out to keep their business at the top of its game.

Producing the kind of top quality product Carson City Barbecue has built a national reputation on requires complete commitment to freshness, the gold standard upon which Hyatt and Felker base their product.

It's the only way to meet the high expectations they have for their food.

"Because we want to put the freshest product out all of the time," Hyatt said. "We try not to over cook, so we cool out. We try to have it come out and not sit a long time in the warmer, because that's the way we do our catering. All you can eat, cooked fresh, on site."

Keeping to that standard costs money, and the partners have invested much in equipment to ensure they can meet the quantitative demand at the Nugget Rib Cook Off while maintaining their commitment to fresh quality.

"We really pride ourselves on having a fresh product, and just look at the warmer," Hyatt said, gesturing to one of several warmers filled with racks of ribs. "On Saturday last year, I had four warmers and four cookers in the booth. Each cooker dumps into a warmer. Every time a cooker was coming out, the warmer was empty, so I had fresh ribs coming out every hour all day long, all through the whole cook."

For the average weekend warrior, barbecuing ribs requires little beyond a grill, some rub or sauce, and maybe a beer in hand.

But for the crew of Hyatt and Felker, it is the equivalent of working two full-time jobs for six straight days.

"This is an 18 hour a day job the whole week of the rib cook off," Hyatt said. "It's just the sheer enormity of what you've got going over the counter."

Work days are 12-18 hours long for most of the cookers and the crews at the Nugget Rib Cook Off, and that's just to be able to keep pace with the daily demands for meat from the tens of thousands of critics and two-legged palates down on Victorian Square.

"I slept until about 7:30 this morning," Felker said. "But one of us is usually here by about 5 a.m. We get one of the cookers loaded full of ribs, then we start unloading the pork and beef, because that cooks all night. Those go in at 7 p.m. tonight."

It's Friday afternoon around 2 p.m., considered a lull in the action.

Hyatt has just enough time to spend explaining the amount of work that goes into preparing and cooking the ribs so that they are ready for the thousands of watering mouths eager to consume them.

"These went in this morning," he said, pointing to a cabinet full of enormous beef ribs cooking slowly on 160-degree heat. "They'll be out for this evening at 6 p.m. tonight."

Just in time for the peak of the Friday night dinner crowd, Hyatt winked.

"And that's about the time we'll run out again," he added.

Timing is everything at the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook Off, said Hyatt, and time management is a critical part of running a successful cook.

"That cooker was completely full, so we put six cases in there, and two cases in over there," he explained. "This morning this one was loaded completely full, and now I've loaded it full again. It's just got raw ribs in it right now. No smoke. Just a dry rub, ready to start cooking."

A half hour before noon, Hyatt pulled 60 racks of ribs out of one cooker, followed by 180 out of a second, and 40 from a third to replenish what was being consumed this morning.

"One of the new guys I asked what I was doing when I filled the warmer up completely," Hyatt recalled. "He said to me, 'what are you doing? You're way over cooking.' Well, the next cook is ready to come out and we're down to two pans left of what was brought out this morning."

Two pans is 40 racks of ribs, Hyatt said. When they get down that low, it's time to have a new batch ready to replenish the supply.

"I've got a cook coming out right now, another coming out in an hour, and another after that at 7 p.m. tonight," said Hyatt, explaining that a cook is a full cycle of food produced using all five of his cookers.

Each cooker, fueld by propane and fed by a steady flow of hickory pellets, can hold up to 200 racks of ribs.

"The nice thing about pellets is that every hour or two you can throw in another cup, because it just feeds the fire," Hyatt said. "We want it smoldering away."

But for competitive grilling veterans like Hyatt and Felker, who could probably run their show blind folded because they know the event so well, the greatest challenge over the course of six days in Sparks is not keeping up with the demand for ribs.

Rather, it's ensuring that their timing is spot on. This means having enough people covering every aspect of the cook all throughout the day.

"At an event of this size, the biggest challenge is keeping all of the proper people in the proper places in the proper time," Hyatt said. "Not having too many counter people, not having enough counter people, having enough people who can cut, are all challenges. So I'm always trying to incorporate new people into the business and teach them how to cut, teach them to do the front counter and run the grill."

Hyatt said he started this year's cook off with more people than he needed, but this was all by design.

"We're training them for tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday," he said. "Tomorrow you will not ever see an empty space at the order counter."

Hyatt said Saturday is the apex of the event, by far the busiest of the six days spent on Victorian Square.

"Saturday is probably about 25 percent more than Sunday, so it starts earlier, lasts longer, and there's just more people," he said. "On Saturday, we'll run four lines, but basically we'll run eight lines because one person will be asking the person behind them what they want."

The crew will be hopping, too, feverishly working to fill a constant flow of orders.

"We'll have runners that will run back and forth just as fast as we can put it out, and that's all day long," Hyatt said. "All of these cookers will be totally loaded with 180 racks of ribs all day long."

Hyatt said he is expecting 2-3 cooks over the course of the day on Saturday.

"We'll totally change out three of the cookers twice, and two of them we will change out three times," he said. "I'll be here at 5 a.m."

A whole cook takes between five and six hours, Hyatt said, and doing three cooks will require a full 18-hour time commitment.

"They've got to be rolling at 5 a.m., and then at 2 p.m., and out by 7 or 8 p.m. at night," he said. "Because if they don't come out by 7, I can't use them."

One of 23 vendors at this year's Nugget Rib Cook Off, Carson City Barbecue pumps out an average of 2,000 to 3,000 pounds a day over a six-day period, Hyatt said.

The 230,000 pounds of meat consumed during the weeklong cook-off is just the pork ribs, Hyatt said, and doesn't include beef ribs, brisket, pork shoulder, chicken, or other meat prepared for consumers.

Each vendor has their meat delivered on a pallet every day, Hyatt said, and twice on Saturday.

"Everyday they deliver the whole pallet as high as I can reach," said Hyatt, stretching his hands up in the air. "That's how tall the pallet is."

On Saturdays, Carson City Barbecue is ready for its second pallet after about 3-4 hours, he said.

"There are years when every single rib went through my hands," Hyatt said. "I loaded and unloaded, and touched every single rib."

Through many years of hard work and experience, Hyatt and Felker are disciplined in their processes. This helps them remain one of the cook-off's most successful perennial vendors.

"You have to do this year after year after year to develop your strategy and make sure everything comes off without a hitch," Hyatt said. "That's if all of your equipment stays working."

Equipment malfunction is inevitable at an event as enormous as the Nugget Rib Cook Off, especially when cookers and warmers are running constantly for optimal output.

But Hyatt said cookers look out for one another, even though this is a very competitive event. Helping one another out is just what the vendors do for each other.

"Everybody else helps everyone else out," he said. "Almost every cooker here has helped another cooker out at one time or another."

On Friday afternoon, Carson City Barbecue had loaned one of its cookers to the vendor next door, Uncle Bubb, whose oven broke earlier.

Hyatt and Felker let Uncle Bubb borrow a cooker to help him get caught back up again on his ribs, because the broken oven put him way behind.

"Last year, his big cooker broke down completely," Hyatt recalled. "That's a 2500 cooker that holds 2,500 pounds of meat. It was his bread and butter. We loaned him our extra burner. He came back the next day and said, 'you saved my bacon.' "

While Hyatt and Felker are naturally neighborly with their fellow vendors, they also know how to take care of their own. Their crew takes care of them, too.

"I have a lot of my crew make sure I drink a bottle of water every hour," said Hyatt, noting that working around intense heat for hours on end can easily lead to dehydration and exhaustion. "There's somebody I designate now every hour to grab me a water. If I don't then after a while I'll just start wobbling around."

Catch Hyatt, Felker and the crew of Carson City Barbecue at the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook Off all weekend long through Monday, Labor Day.

If you haven't put them on your bucket list yet, you should.

Besides their signature St. Louis-style pork ribs, Carson City Barbecue offers a full menu of items, including enormous beef ribs, beef brisket chopped from massive blackened hunks, chicken, pork shoulder, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and even alligator meat cooked to perfection.

The beef ribs are a full meal all their own, but they are melt-in-your-mouth moist and fall-of-the-bone tender. No sauce required for any of Carson City Barbecue's meats. But, since it has a reputation for the best sauce around, I recommend you don't go without it.

Eating a Carson City Barbecue rib is like a slice of moist, decadent cake. But eating one of its ribs with the sauce is like the cake with an extra dab of frosting on top.

You've just got to try it.