By Rachel Belle

Listen
to A Female BBQ Champ Wants to School You on
BBQ

How many times have you been to a barbecue and all the
woman are off to the side chatting while the men are
gathered around the grill? Women are finally earning their
place in professional barbecue competitions, and one of
them is Portland’s Lynnae
Oxley, who also teaches barbecue classes around
western Washington.

“One of the things that I love to do in the class is
teach people how to do this and teach ’em some of my
secrets. I’m a five time grand champion barbecuer here in
the Northwest. I’ve won grand champions in Canada, in
Washington and Oregon. I’ve been to the American Royal,
which is a national event, and I’ve been to the Jack
Daniels World Invitational Champion Barbecue in Lynchburg,
Tennessee.”

Lynnae stopped by the station to show us what she can
do with pulled pork.

“This is a pork shoulder that’s been cooked over
applewood, from Yakima, for a good 11 hours. This was a
bone-in pork butt that we got locally here. Because it
cooked so long, this thing is falling apart and that bone
just slipped right out.”

She does ribs, brisket, chicken; and she does it all
right.

“The way we like to do barbecue, we don’t like to
slather a bunch of sauce on it. We want you to taste the
smoke, taste the spices, taste the pork and a sauce should
accent it. You go to a restaurant and they have this stuff
covered with sauce, you don’t want that. They’re trying to
hide something or they’re not that proud of their
barbecue. We’re really proud of our barbecue. I’m proud of
my barbecue and I want you to taste the barbecue before
you taste the sauce.”

After a lifetime of working in kitchens, Lynnae caught
the barbecue bug in 2007, and she’s been competing ever
since.

“Anybody that’s in the barbecue world will tell you,
this becomes an obsession. You wake up thinking about
this, you go to sleep thinking about this. Your library at
home expands and all your cookbooks become barbecue
cookbooks. You’re online a lot, there are tons of forums,
tons of recipes.”

Lynnae says she’s competing against a lot of men with
big barbecue egos, but she admits that she has one too.
She’s out there to win.

“Women in barbecue are becoming a lot more relevant and
a lot more noticed. It’s still kind of a boy’s game, in a
lot of ways, but we don’t let that deter us at all. We are
out there and we are cooking and chopping and
smoking. We know our meat, we know our wood, our smoke,
our spices, our smokers. We know the audience, we know
the judges, we know what we need to do to craft really
good, championship barbecue.”

Lucky for us, Lynnae is willing to share what she
knows. She talks about cooking the perfect rib.

“The ribs should pull off the bone. They shouldn’t just
come off the bone. Anything that just comes right off the
bone’s gonna be overcooked. That’s the wrong way of
cooking a rib. That denotes that it’s been steamed and
that’s not the right way of cooking a rib. I’m blowing a
lot of people’s minds by saying that. A lot of people
judge a good rib by saying ‘Oh, It falls right off the
bone.’ Well, if I’m at a place and it falls off the bone,
guess what, I know it’s been steamed and I don’t like
that.”

She says she can teach people to make excellent BBQ on
any grill.

“You don’t need a big huge pit, you don’t need a lot of
money. You just need the passion, you need the taste. You
don’t need a whole lot of experience. You just need
enthusiasm, what we call the ‘Eye of the Pig,’ and we can
help you learn that.”

Lynnae has a pig with wings tattooed on her forearm,
she’s obsessed with barbecue, but she admits that she can
only eat so much swine. Especially after a weekend long
barbecue competition.

“It’s usually hot, we haven’t really showered in two
days, most of us are almost drunk. We are so filled with
barbecue that we don’t even want to eat barbecue. So the
three things that we like to eat after a barbecue
competition are ice cream, because we want something cold
and creamy. I personally crave pizza. Cheese pizza.
Nothing else, cheese pizza is wonderful. Also, some kind
of salad that’s cold and raw and crispy and crunchy. It’s
kind of a textural thing.”

Lynnae teaches classes around the Pacific Northwest,
and you can click
here to find more information.

“I’m just taking what I learned on the circuit and
teaching people how to do it. I want to spread the love of
barbecue, I want people to learn to barbecue, especially
women.”

Who is Rachel Belle?