Grab your wet wipes! We pitted 64 recipes against each other in the battle for the ultimate BBQ plate—and we need your votes.
AR SF Full Table
AR SF Full Table
One plate. Four sections. Sixty-four BBQ recipes to choose from. Welcome to Allrecipes' The Ultimate BBQ Showdown. We hope you came hungry and highly opinionated!
With summer just around the corner, the Allrecipes editorial team has been dreaming up all of the things we want to eat: the sauciest ribs, the creamiest potato salad, and a peach cobbler that would make your grandmother cry with joy. In short, we want all of the BBQ food you'd find at a backyard feast—and we want YOU, dear reader, in on the action.
Inspired by our good friends at Serious Eats and their annual Starch Madness tournament (can you believe a BURGER won a SANDWICH competition this year?!), the Allrecipes team wants to tackle BBQ. But instead of finding the singular best recipe like you normally do in a NCAA-style tournament, we're searching for the ultimate BBQ plate. Because you don't just pick one recipe when you're at a cookout, you get a little of everything: the meats, the hot sides, the cold sides, the sweets.
Now your turn: Let's build that perfect BBQ plate with votes!
Vote for Your Favorite Recipe
How to Vote
The battle for the ultimate BBQ plate will begin on May 16th, 2024 and voting will take place on this page (above!) and on Allrecipes' Instagram stories (@allrecipes). Because we are but wee mortals, voting will only happen on business days—no weekends, and nothing to see here on Memorial Day itself. Each day's matchups will be posted at 12 p.m. ET and will be open for voting for 23 hours. From there, votes will be tallied, hearts will be broken, and the recipes with the most votes will move on to the next round. And so on, and so on. The very last round of voting will be on Tuesday, May 28th, and the ultimate BBQ plate will be announced on Wednesday, May 29th.
You can vote once a day on both Instagram stories and on this page: Just click on your favorite recipe and then click submit. Easy-peasy, right? Even though we can't give you a physical I VOTED sticker for doing your not-quite-civic duty, know that we are doing so in spirit.
Meet the Competitors
We've divided our ultimate BBQ plate into four sections or regions: The Meats, The Hot Sides, The Cold Sides, and The Sweets. Scroll through below to meet your recipe competitors!
How We Chose the Recipes
Allrecipes/ Adrienne Battistella
With BBQ styles being so different from one part of the country to another, we called in an expert to help us narrow the field: Allrecipes Allstar Dakari Akorede. Dakari grew up grilling with his dad, and eventually became the "Grill Man" in college for his fraternity. The first tailgate he ever threw was for more than 700 people (!) and involved hundreds of pounds of beef, pork, and chicken. Currently, he works as a pit master and teaches barbecue classes online. So yeah, you can say he knows a thing or two about BBQ.
We asked Dakari to help us select recipes that the average cook could make at home, but still feel proud to bring it to a potluck, placing them in the four categories above: The Meats, The Cold Sides, The Hot Sides, and The Sweets. Our editorial team selected the most popular BBQ recipes that fall into these four categories, and Dakari made the final call.
Dotdash Meredith
How the Bracket Works
If you're wondering hmmmm Allrecipes, this bracket kind of looks like what NCAA does for March Madness, you would be correct. You might also be thinking ummmm Allrecipes, I just looked at my calendar and it's currently May and not March. And once again, you'd be correct. You're so smart!
In the name of finding the perfect BBQ plate, we're breaking all of the rules by hosting a bracket-style competition right before the start of summer, aka the start of BBQ season. The NBA playoffs are still going on in May sooooo maybe that's the tie-in? Yeah, let's roll with that. Sports!
So, welcome to May Madness! Like the NCAA's March Madness bracket, our 64 competitors—er, recipes—are divided into four categories: The Meats, The Cold Sides, The Hot Sides, and The Sweets. The 16 recipes in each region aren’t literally seeded (because every recipe is a winner in our hearts), but rather organized to play similar recipes in the first round: Peach pie will go up against peach cobbler, fried green tomatoes will go up against fried okra, etc. From there, it’s single elimination all the way to the championship.
Lastly, this bracket-style tournament is different from March Madness because we're trying to find the ultimate BBQ plate—four recipes in total—instead of just one winning recipe.
Here's how the voting days will shake out based on the bracket:
- Thursday, May 16th: The Meats (Round 1)
- Friday, May 17th: Hot Sides (Round 1)
- Monday, May 20th: Cold Sides (Round 1)
- Tuesday, May 21st: The Sweets (Round 1)
- Wednesday, May 22nd: The Meats + Hot Sides (Round 2)
- Thursday, May 23rd: Cold Sides + The Sweets (Round 2)
- Friday, May 24th: All Categories (Round 3)
- Tuesday, May 28th: All Categories (Round 4)
- Wednesday, May 29th: Winner Reveal
Voting Recap
Check back here throughout the 2-week voting period to see if your favorite BBQ recipes have made the cut.
Dotdash Meredith
Read the original article on All Recipes.