On Sunday, pitmasters from Greater Washington and beyond fired up grills and cooked cuts of beef low and slow for the title of best kosher barbecue brisket in the DMV.
Capital Camps’ annual Kosher Brisket BBQ Competition on Monday may have been the first of its kind for DMV barbecuers. Dozens of community members drove up to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, to either compete in the Kansas City Barbeque Society-sanctioned event or sample the brisket.
David Brunner, the chief operations officer of Capital Camps and Retreat Center, purchased kosher brisket from the Jewish-owned WOLFoods and sold the meat to the competing teams.
“People loved it,” Brunner said. “The turnout was much better than I expected. … There was buzz in the community.”
The 20 individuals competing across seven teams each received a cook station in the dining hall with a cutting board, knife and barbecue smoker, all kosher and brand-new.
The KCBS judges evaluated each brisket entry by taste and appearance, crowning Baltimore resident Ruth Adelstein of the team “Brisket Broads” the winner.
“[Adelstein’s] partner bailed on her at the last minute, so it was just her,” Brunner said. “That’s what made it even better that she won because she was flying solo, and everyone else had support and teammates.”
Dan New-Schneider and Honey Cohen of Congregation Har Shalom’s team, “Run With Forks,” won the People’s Choice Award.
Brunner spearheaded this inaugural competition out of a desire to raise awareness of kosher meat within the barbecue community and vice versa.
“I wanted people to be thinking differently about barbecue in the kosher world,” Brunner said. “A lot of times, kosher [barbecue] means your grandmother’s brisket with some barbecue sauce on it, and that’s not what real barbecue is.”
“Real” barbecue-smoked meat is cooked slowly at low temperatures over wood and charcoal, which Brunner emphasized is possible under the laws of kashrut and should be the norm at every kosher barbecue event.
He said he hopes the Oct. 13 competition opened attendees’ eyes to the quality of kosher barbecue.
“If we introduce the rest of the community — make it a competition that’s open to the public — then the general public would get to try it, and then maybe they’ll start demanding more of the people putting kosher food out there,” Brunner said. “There’s not a lot of options for the kosher-observing folks in the D.C. area.”
The idea gained steam during a conversation the Rockville resident had with a fellow member of Har Shalom in Potomac. At Kiddush, the congregant approached Brunner and asked, “Do you like barbecue?” His answer was an unequivocal “yes.”
“We started talking about barbecue quite a bit,” Brunner said, adding that the resulting friendship made him realize that every shul has “pockets” of barbecue enthusiasts.
“I thought to myself, ‘Why not get us all together?’” Brunner recalled. “My original goal in this was to bring us all together and make a community out of it.”
The 257-acre Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, property was the perfect setting for a cooking competition of this scale.
“Our facility is really well-suited for this event,” Brunner said. “I’ve got this really cool facility that has a lodge-style retreat center, bunk housing, a camp, a kosher dining hall and a kosher facility. I’ve got all sorts of accommodations that run the gamut.”
It’s important to Brunner to provide lodging for the competing teams because barbecue is not a one-day affair.
“The people who are coming to compete have to come early because barbecue takes time,” he explained. “For a 12 o’clock event on a Monday, you can’t just show up that morning and make barbecue. When I smoke a brisket, … it takes like 15 hours.”
Capital Retreat Center is under the Vaad HaRabanim of Greater Washington, and Star-K does its kosher supervision: “We do that so that any Jew can come and feel comfortable to eat at our site,” Brunner said.
Although admission was free, tasters purchased tickets in advance to sample the brisket. Capital Camps and Retreat Center requested donations to help cover the cost of the event, with a portion of the proceeds going towards providing Israeli children with an American summer camp experience.
“It’s core to our mission,” Brunner said. “It’s just what we want to do.”
The event was a big hit in the community, and Brunner hopes to make it an annual tradition.
“Everybody was like, ‘When’s the next one?’” he said.
