Barbecue Prescription

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire-and you might also look for the Rib Doctor. That would be Hayward Harris Jr. of Riverside, whose prowess is legendary in the sizzling milieu of barbecue competitions. From Shake, Rattle & Smoke (Azusa) to the Six-Shooter Smoke-Off (Tucson), Harris and his wife, Eva, are champions in hotly contested categories such as Best Brisket at competitions all over the country.

There’s also the World Series of pit, grill and smoker: the annual American Royal Barbecue Contest in Kansas City, Mo., officiated by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, for which Harris is a judge. The contest typically hosts 360 to 380 teams, scored on their chicken, ribs, pork shoulder and brisket. Harris, 51, first encountered the group more than a decade ago at a National Barbecue Assn. event. ‘They made it sound like they walked on water,’ he recalls of the Kansas contingent. ‘I said I was pretty good, too. They ate my ribs. No one spoke to me again. I went home dejected and didn’t hear anything until August, when the president asked me to judge the American Royal.’

Harris started barbecuing at age ‘5 or 6’ while growing up in Compton. He would start the fires for his dad’s holiday barbecuing, which began at 7 a.m. He got serious about barbecue in 1979 after graduating from UCLA with a degree in political science and moving to Rialto, where he read of a renowned barbecue restaurant in San Bernardino. ‘I was ready to feast, and it was the worst I ever had in my life,’ he says. Harris then bought some 55-gallon barrel oil drums from a friend and never looked back. ‘Those were the Rolls-Royce of barbecue pits,’ he says of the homemade cookers. ‘They are called ‘soul buckets,’ and I still have them.’ Harris used the drums until 1991, when he joined the National Barbecue Assn. and bought his first commercial pit. He started barbecuing commercially in 1989.

Harris was already barbecuing when he met Eva. ‘She challenged me,’ he says. ‘She said she was the best barbecuer around and invited me to her chicken wings barbecue, but I wasn’t impressed. When she tasted my spare ribs, she admitted it was like night and day.’ Eva gifted Harris with Big Bertha, his deluxe indirect-cooking, Texas-style pit. At competitions,where prizes can run into thousands of dollars, the Harrises take turns at the pit for all-night marathons. A Harris brisket, for example, cooks for 18 or 19 hours. ‘When it’s finished, it just melts in your mouth,’ Harris says. ‘When barbecuing, slower is better.’

The Harrises compete under the aegis of their catering company, the Rib Doctor. The Rib Doctor once catered at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, and for one wedding anniversary party, Harris wore a tuxedo while barbecuing. The Harrises have also appeared on a TV commercial for KC Masterpiece Barbecue Sauce. (Speaking of which, Harris says his own meticulously perfected sauce features ‘about 14 ingredients’ and is due on the market soon.)

A purist who eschews gas grills, ‘ceramic bricks don’t give flavor,” Harris advises barbecuers to buy quality meat, get to know the local butcher and keep a good instant-read thermometer handy. For flavor, he recommends a ‘rub,’ blending seasonings and sauce-but the most important ingredient, Harris insists, is the joy of the thing. ‘There are no rules in barbecue. The most important thing is to have fun.’