What Great Pitmasters Do Differently (Ray Sheehan Explains)

A lot of people think great barbecue comes down to a secret rub, an expensive pit, or copying whatever went viral last week. But the pitmasters people really trust, the ones everyone wants running the fire at their party, tend to do a few basic things very differently. Episode 99 wasn’t about recipes. It was about how great pitmasters think, how they make decisions at the pit, and why their barbecue stays consistent even when conditions aren’t perfect.

My guest was Chef Ray Sheehan. Ray is a chef by trade, the author of two barbecue cookbooks (Award-Winning BBQ Sauces and How to Use Them and Big Green Egg Basics From a Master Barbecuer), an award-winning sauce maker, and a certified KCBS judge. He has seen barbecue from behind the pit, behind the pen, and behind the scenes of the industry. Ray, thank you again for hanging in there with me through a rocky technical start.

Meet Chef Ray Sheehan

Ray has been in the sauce game for about ten years. His first company, BBQ Buddha, won a lot of awards, and in 2024 he moved over to the Chef Ray Sheehan brand: small-batch, all-natural sauces and seasonings. The new line has kept winning, including a second-place finish for his Memphis Mop sauce at the American Royal. His products are in about 45 stores, and you can order online at raysheehan.com. He also contributes to BBQ News Magazine and does a lot of Big Green Egg events and grill store demos. His team won People’s Choice at the New Jersey Eggfest last year.

What “great” actually means in barbecue

Great doesn’t necessarily mean trophies or social media clout. To me it comes down to consistency, confidence, and control, and judges, guests, and family all value the same fundamentals.

Ray’s answer: great pitmasters don’t chase tricks. They master the fundamentals and the process, they cook with intention, and they want to learn why things work. Recipes help, but the process is what creates consistency: time, temperature, airflow, and moisture. Don’t memorize a recipe. Learn how your fire behaves. Fire management is a real skill, and clean fire gives you clean smoke, which gives you better-tasting food. Above all, a great pitmaster has a plan, can make adjustments, has patience, and learns through repetition.

Plan before you light the fire

Ray put it simply: if you don’t plan to succeed, you plan to fail. He told a story from the Boo-B-Q in Delaware, a big KCBS contest held in October right between the ocean and the bay. High winds were almost guaranteed. He’d be holding onto his tent in the middle of the night, in the rain, with briskets and pork butts on. You have to plan for the things that shouldn’t happen but could, and that’s as true in the backyard as it is at a contest.

Another time, charcoal got stuck in the chute of his gravity-fed cooker during a competition while his chicken wasn’t done yet. The worst thing you can do is panic. He stayed calm, used a piece of rebar to open up space in the chute so air could get through, and got the temperature back up.

That cooker has a story of its own. It’s one of seven prototypes Myron Mixon built, a model that later became the G Series in his lineup. It’s a charcoal cabinet with no onboard electronics, and Ray runs a fan in the charcoal chute to push heat and smoke into the cooking chamber. It holds a full 20-pound packer brisket, two pork butts, and four racks of ribs.

Coming from restaurant kitchens, Ray treats a cook like mise en place: everything ready before you start. Meat trimmed, seasoned, and injected if you inject. Cooker ready. Charcoal and tools within reach. What you don’t want is people coming over at four and you at 8 a.m. with no idea where anything is and the brisket not even on.

The honest critique that changed everything

Ray didn’t start out great at barbecue. His first smoker was an electric unit, and he was making sauces and seasonings long before he learned fire. His food came out dark and sooty, and he thought it was great until people told him it really wasn’t. He says that honest critique was the best thing that could have happened. He took classes, read everything, and eventually took Tuffy Stone’s master competition class in Richmond, Virginia. His biggest takeaway from Tuffy: competition barbecue is a tenderness contest, and you know you made good barbecue if it still eats well once it’s cooled down.

Consistency isn’t muscle memory

Correctional Officer suggested in the chat that consistency is a lot like muscle memory. Ray pushed back a little. Muscle memory might apply to a hot-and-fast steak, but in low and slow cooking every piece of meat reacts differently depending on its weight, its moisture, and the humidity outside and inside your cooker. His advice: keep a logbook, cook the same protein three or four times, and change only one variable at a time.

He also made a great point about recipes. When he got his cookbook deal, people asked why he’d give away his sauce recipes. His answer: the best chefs in the world give out their recipes. A recipe is a blueprint. Give the same one to three people and you’ll probably get three somewhat different results.

Underdogs, one cooker, and how to start competing

Correctional Officer asked if Ray had ever seen an underdog with a basic setup beat the big players. Ray said yes: it was him. Early on he showed up with a small enclosed trailer and one cooker, surrounded by teams with three or four cookers and big rigs, and pulled a couple of top 10 calls. KCBS judging is blind, so the judges have no idea whose box they’re tasting. It’s about how you cook, not what you cook on.

Kettlemania asked whether one cooker makes turn-in timing harder. Ray’s approach: big meats on around 1 or 2 in the morning, ribs seasoned around 6 and on by 7, and chicken on a separate kettle or Smokey Mountain if needed. For a first-time competitor, he recommends a local firehouse or VFW rib cook-off to get your feet wet, then the KCBS backyard division, which is chicken and ribs.

Your most valuable tools: your palate and a good thermometer

Before a cook, Ray thinks all the way back to where he’s sourcing the meat and what kind of cook it is: a quick appetizer cook (a sausage fatty, a queso dip) or a big brisket-and-ribs practice cook. Either way, he says the two tools that put you way ahead are your palate and a good thermometer. He likes a little apple juice spritz or injection in a pork butt, but he skips pricier competition injections at home because they aren’t worth the cost there. I hadn’t heard anyone say this before, but I love it: a pitmaster should be working on their palate and learning what good barbecue tastes like.

Fat side, trimming, and wrapping

Fat side up or down? Ray says, despite what some people on social media claim, the fat cap doesn’t baste the brisket and the meat doesn’t reabsorb the juice. He puts the fat toward the heat source to protect the meat. That’s my answer too: where your heat comes from decides it.

No-trim brisket? Ray explained that trims differ for different reasons. A competition trim is aggressive, and a lot of cooks save the trimmings for sausage or burgers. A restaurant trim is minimal and those briskets come out great. But in his view, leaving a brisket totally untrimmed won’t give you good results, because some of that fat just won’t render in the time you’ll realistically leave it on. He said social media can inspire people, but when it spreads bad information it does the craft a disservice.

Foil or butcher paper? Ray uses foil for ribs and has switched to butcher paper for brisket. He’d spend hours building bark, wrap in foil, and the bark would turn soft. Paper lets it breathe. He even uses paper on dino ribs, and says the crust stays crunchy, with caramelized fat and tender meat underneath. Foil tends to steam and speeds up the cook; paper helps keep the bark. In the backyard he doesn’t always wrap pork ribs at all, and he doesn’t think skipping the wrap adds enough time to worry about. If you do foil pork ribs, set the bark first and don’t add a lot of liquid.

What great pitmasters understand about heat

Ray’s line on this one stuck with me: the lid on your smoker isn’t a suggestion, it’s a boundary. It’s there to keep the heat in and keep you out. Trust the process, let the food cook, and build consistency through repetition. When I asked about habits that build long-term trust, he came back to the same thing: learn to run your cooker at a consistent temperature. Once you can make it behave like an oven that runs at 350 when you set it to 350, your brisket and ribs start to fall into place.

Restraint: season to reveal, not to hide

“Barbecue is not about hiding flaws. It’s about revealing quality.” Don’t oversauce, don’t overseason, don’t oversmoke, and let the meat speak. As a judge, Ray notices right away when seasoning isn’t balanced, whether it’s sauce pooling in the box, too much heat, or too little seasoning. Tenderness is the biggest factor, and a tender piece with off seasoning may still score better because it was cooked right.

Ray is a self-described sauce guy, but he says good barbecue doesn’t need sauce. It complements it. Treat sauce as a finisher, a glaze in the last 10 to 15 minutes, not something to put on early where it can burn. It’s one more layer, just like your rub, your spritz, and your injection.

Competition flavor vs. backyard flavor

Kettlemania mentioned that competitors told him you can’t cook the way you eat at home and expect to win. Ray agreed. A judge tastes six samples in each of four categories, so you’re in a one-bite challenge. In that one bite they’re assessing tenderness, taste, and appearance, and comparing it to every other barbecue they’ve had. So competition food is more highly seasoned, built in layers (rub or injection, a mop or spritz, a light glaze, sometimes a final dusting of a ground savory rub), and a lot of competition products lean on flavor enhancers. Ray’s own products are all natural, with no MSG or high-fructose corn syrup.

His scale: if backyard flavor is a two, competition is turned up to a seven, but it still has to be balanced. Highly seasoned, not overseasoned. You probably wouldn’t want to sit down to a whole plate of it. Does competition wreck good backyard cooks? Ray says you just have to decide who you’re cooking for, a judge or your family and friends, because they’re two different audiences. On regional styles, he said some top cooks play to the local judges, while others run the same program everywhere. He knows a cook from New Jersey who used Ray’s own Kansas City sauce and placed near the top at the Jack without changing a thing. If it’s good, it’s good.

Gear, clean pits, and stepping out of your comfort zone

On gear obsession (I’m guilty), Ray joked that your wife might leave you when the new prep bucket takes her spot. He writes gift guides and loves shining a light on small companies, but he isn’t a big gear guy himself. There’s a tool for everyone. He uses catfish skinners to pull rib membranes, and he once nearly took his hand off with a brisket fat skimmer that made no sense to him. A good knife does the job. Learn your pit and trust the process. Neither costs much.

I asked what pitmasters should demand from their cooker, and Ray flipped it: what does the cooker demand from the pitmaster? Keep it clean. Built-up grease isn’t “seasoning,” and it doesn’t add flavor. Take care of your pit and it will take care of you.

He also encouraged everyone to step outside their comfort zone. Plenty of people are fine with ribs and chicken but afraid of brisket. Try the flat, the dino ribs, the tri-tip. He was intimidated by beef plate ribs until he just did them. The first batch was still tight, and he learned to go by feel: when the probe slides in like warm butter, you’re good. Use all your senses, not just the clock in the recipe.

On brisket prices: prime brisket is running around $5.99 a pound at Costco and Sam’s Club here in the Bay Area. Ray said he’s seeing $8 to $10 a pound in New Jersey, and $8.99 for choice from one high-quality butcher he works with.

Giving back and passing it on

Ray was inducted into the Order of the Magic Mop in Kansas City by BBQ Hall of Famer Ardie Davis. It isn’t a sauce award. It honors contributions to barbecue and to people, including his work promoting youth in barbecue. He sponsors the kids’ cook at the New Jersey Eggfest, and he taught his son to cook because it’s a life skill. His ask: whatever you learn about barbecue, pass it on to the young people in your area. I’ve said it many times, the people I meet in barbecue are salt-of-the-earth folks, and Ray fits right in.

Rapid fire

• One habit every great pitmaster has: controlling their fire.
• One mistake to stop making immediately: squeezing the brisket on camera. The juice is supposed to stay in the meat. Respect the food.
• One skill that pays dividends forever: consistency. In food, you get paid for consistency, whether it’s the backyard, a restaurant, a pop-up, or a contest.
• One thing beginners overthink: everything. Start slow, like a train building momentum. You don’t need a brisket every time. Do poppers, a fatty, a dip, a double-smoked ham, or a roast chicken. Just fire up the cooker.

Ray’s final advice: don’t chase perfection, chase understanding. Understand your pit, the meat, and the process, then trust the process and get cooking.

Where to find Chef Ray Sheehan

You can find Ray as Chef Ray Sheehan on Instagram and Facebook, and his sauces, seasonings, recipes, and cookbooks are at raysheehan.com. He’s also a regular contributor to BBQ News Magazine. Ray, thank you for sharing so much with us.

If you missed the live show, the replay is up on YouTube and the audio version is available on your favorite podcast app. And if you want to keep conversations like this going all week, come join us in the Backyard SmokeMaster Society. It’s free, it’s not on Facebook, and it’s strictly about barbecue. Get out there, enjoy your grills and smokers, and cook something.