Melissa Cookston is known as the “Winningest Woman in Barbecue.” The Mississippi native is the ultimate pitmaster, having won numerous competitions, including seven world barbecue championships (so far). She is a successful restaurateur, the first woman to be inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame, and the author of three barbecue cookbooks. Yet she still feels she has more to learn.
“I came from small-town Mississippi, just a wide spot in the road really,” Cookston said. There were no traffic lights in town. When she was a kid, her mother would drive her to Memphis, Tennessee, which was hours away, just to eat ribs. Cookston and her grandfather were also “big buddies,” she said. When she was a kid, he would take her along to meet friends at a coffee shop, “where all the old men gathered to swap farming stories and fish lies.” The java joint also doubled as the local barbecue joint, and, as often as not, they’d finish up with barbecue sandwiches. Cookston added that her grandfather was “the one that taught me my core values, … how to be a good loser, but even more importantly, how to be a good winner.”
Becoming a Master
In her adult life, her interest in barbecue was sparked by an early date with her now-husband. In 1996, he took her to a barbecue contest in Memphis. She was intrigued by the whole scene. So she signed up to compete at the next contest in Greenwood, Mississippi, cooking whole pork shoulders. “I really didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, but it was a huge competition and I came in fifth, so I was very pleased with that.”
Her competitive nature, coupled with a passion for the food, drove her on, but she found she had to teach herself. “I don’t come from a family of good cooks. I just don’t,” she said. “My grandfather was the skinniest man I ever knew, and I think that’s because my grandmother just couldn’t cook.” To learn how to barbecue, she couldn’t simply search the internet for answers, so she spent a lot of time doing trial and error with recipes. She started at the local grocery store pulling spices off the shelf. She was surprised to find her competitors hadn’t gone the same route. “The guys were going to the butcher shop and buying a barbecue rub and adding a little something to it and calling it their grandmother’s recipe!” She persisted, and in 2010, she won her first world championship. More soon followed.
In 2011, she opened Memphis BBQ Company, just south of Memphis in Horn Lake, Mississippi, specializing in ribs, pulled pork, and brisket. She had to open it in the culturally rich Delta region, she said. “I really wanted my food, not just barbecue, but all my food, to imitate the bluesy music, the colorful artwork, the rich land, and bring that all together,” said Cookston. “I’ve never forgotten where I came from.”
In 2017, when she got the call that she was being inducted into the Hall of Fame, she was driving. “I had to pull over to the side of the road,” she said. “This has got to be a joke that somebody’s playing on me,” she initially thought. Having found success in the world of competitive barbecue, in 2021, she founded the World Junior BBQ League to inspire teens from all walks of life to start learning barbecue and all the leadership and teamwork skills that come with it. It’s an effort to “give back to barbecue what barbecue gave to me,” instill enthusiasm and respect for the craft in the next generation, and introduce them to a healthy hobby, she said. The kids take pride in what they make and what they accomplish. Many of them go on to write about the experience in their college application essays.
Global Influences
With her latest cookbook, “Fanning the Flames: Recipes and Tall Tales from BBQ Hall of Famer Melissa Cookston,” she shares the results of traveling the world and incorporating ingredients from different cuisines into her dishes—some she’s never used or heard of prior to visiting that country. Those cultural experiences have shaped her learning as a chef. “It’s a love letter to my travels and the things that I picked up from so many of the nice people that I met along the way,” she said.
In Hungary, she discovered the coveted smoked Hungarian paprika, which she calls a “game changer” that can instantly add smoky flavor to rubs and spice blends. On another trip, she and her daughter Lauren visited the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria, in the deep south of Italy. “We’d go to the market and find things like bomba, which is a condiment there.” Central to this spicy paste—often used on anything from pasta and pizza to fried eggs—are Calabrian chilies, an ingredient she’s since added to her own pantry and has included in her recipe for collard greens with smoke-braised pork cheeks. “I bring ingredients home, and then I put my Southern spin on whatever I’m cooking.” A trip to North Africa introduced her to chermoula, a chimichurri-like marinade and sauce with warmer spices such as cumin and coriander, which she now uses with her grilled quail recipe. In Peru, she picked up smoked tomato powder, which she uses in tomato-spiced beans and rice. “[In Guatemala], they have a corn pie that is a dessert that is to die for,” she added. The discovery inspired her and her daughter to create a version of creamed corn studded with poblano peppers. She also includes her rendition of the traditional corn pie in the cookbook.
She hopes to instill that same kind of curiosity in the young cooks in the junior barbecue league and students in her cooking classes. “Everything about food is evolving,” she often tells them. “Because just when you think you figured it out, it’s gonna change.”
Somebody once called her the Yoda of competition barbecue, but in her cookbook’s introduction, she writes: “But there is no real BBQ Yoda somewhere waiting to impart the secrets of life to you through an amazing pulled pork recipe.” This isn’t Yoda revealing a secret; Cookston is instead acting as an expert guide preparing you for your journey—because it is your journey, not an invitation to simply imitate, she said. If there’s ever any doubt, trust yourself. “You have to just listen to the whispers of your self-worth saying, ‘You know what? That’s good enough.’”
RECIPE: SAUCY ADOBO WINGS WITH HERBY BUTTERMILK DRESSING
RECIPE: GRILLED RED SNAPPER WITH PISCO LIME SAUCE AND CORN MAQUE CHOUX
RECIPE: MISO TERIYAKI SHORT RIBS WITH PICKLED WATERMELON RADISH
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
