Five judges will choose the best ribs Southlake has to offer during the third annual Rib Off next weekend. And after that, five kid judges will choose Southlake’s best mac ’n’ cheese.
The Southlake Rib Off is an annual cooking competition that started organically in 2017 thanks to a group of Southlake parents. Organizer Chuck Taggart says a bunch of dads came together bragging about whose ribs were the best. After much back and forth, Taggart considered hosting a competition to put their cooking skills to the test. He says it would be like a dance-off for barbecuing; or in this case, more like a rib off.
“I’ve been doing rib parties for about 15 years,” Taggart says. "I said, ‘What we need is to have a rib off to see whose is the best.’ That was how it all started.”
Taggart says five guys competed at their first official Rib Off competition. While it was so far their smallest event, Taggart says the families had a lot of fun, the food was great and the kids enjoyed swimming and playing together.
“Everybody had a blast,” Taggart recalls. “It was so fun that we wanted to do it again next year.”
Ten more contestants participated the year after, with around 30 families joining in on the pool and barbecue fun. They had to move their Rib Off to the South Ridge Lakes neighborhood to meet the higher attendance. They even hired their first official DJ for the event.
Taggart marks the occasion as being the first one where he officially won the Rib Off trophy. It was at that same event where participants came up with another idea to make the Rib Off even more fun for the attendants: a mac 'n’ cheese contest.
“We kind of threw it out there with a bunch of beers,” Taggart chuckles. “We were like ‘Man, we should have a mac ‘n’ cheese contest.’ One of the kids blurted out that the kids should be the judges. And then all the kids were like ‘Yeah!’”
And that’s exactly what they will do this year. From 4 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 31 at South Ridge Lakes, Southlake’s third annual Rib Off will include a mac ‘n’ cheese competition where five kid judges under 16 will put on their judge badges, sample the mac ‘n’ cheese entries and decide which one is the best.
Taggart says there aren’t any strict rules on how the ribs should be prepared or served. As long as it tastes good, he says it's welcome to the Rib Off.
“We’re leaving the rules kind of loose right now,” he says. “Right now we don’t have a strict rule that it must be smoked. The whole idea is to make it bigger and see who has the best ribs in Southlake.”
The third annual Rib Off will include a DJ and pool activities just like the year previous, and will even add face painting as a new activity for this year’s event. If you would like to participate or compete at the third annual Rib Off, email Taggart at ctaggart@aol.com