The Mob of Merrick named kosher BBQ champs

The day Westbury was the Kosher Beef Barbecue Capital of the World began inauspiciously with showers after midnight that sent pit crews scrambling to protect their coals.

Conditions thereafter improved, growing hot, smoky and fragrant as the first Long Island Kosher BBQ Championship opened in the rear parking lot of Temple Beth Torah, the Conservative synagogue that hosted 17 teams and thousands of visitors Sunday, and benefited local food banks.

The teams came from as far away as Georgia, but it was a group of locals calling themselves The Mob, from Congregation Ohav Sholom in Merrick, who won. Their motto was "Barbecue you can't refuse," and in a field of teams with names like Grilled to Meat Jew, the Bubbeque, and 4 Moyels and a Brisket, one expected no less.

Pit boss Kenny Duftler of Merrick, 43, and in the insurance business, was effusive in the minutes after The Mob's victory: the team's first barbecue competition. All those practice runs with baked beans; that scary moment when they almost burned the brisket. But he was silent on technique and vague on ingredients.

On brisket: "Let's just say we used two kinds of chili pepper."

Ribs: "It involves cinnamon and cardamom, but as to the details, I would rather not say."

Duftler kept those secret because The Mob's prize was a trip down South -- to compete on the kosher barbecue circuit there.

That circuit features cook-offs in Birmingham, Atlanta and the World Kosher BBQ Championship in Memphis, now in its 24th year.

The events share some basic kosher rules. For starters, no pork. Also: no cooking implements brought from off-site. Ditto for spices and other ingredients, which were supplied Sunday at the temple from a rabbinically approved common shopping list but did not include Worcestershire sauce, sometimes used in BBQ sauce, because kosher law forbids mixing meat and fish and it contains anchovies.

The Long Island Championship also brought in a mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, Rabbi Brian Thau of West Hempstead, on loan from the Plainview Fairway supermarket. He estimated that tens of thousands of Nassau residents keep kosher.

"They're relying on me to ensure that whatever's here is permissible to eat," he said.

Violation of kosher rules would "would be a terrible thing," he said.

"We follow these because God commanded us."

The championship's rules advised contestants feeling undue stress to "grab a beer, sit down and chill." But they also required food to be turned in within five minutes of specified times.

There were point penalties for "sauce violations," excessively large chunks of meat and "sculptured meat."

So there was tension in the Holy Smoke booth as ribs came due. "It's too blocky, too unwieldy!" said Eric Devlin, 44, an event manager from Dix Hills, trying to spread sauce with the flat of a pair of tongs.

He switched to a spoon. "Just go, go!" he shouted to a teammate who turned the dish in with 32 seconds to spare.

Devlin edits a barbecue magazine, Smoke Signals, and spoke knowledgeably about the sweet spot around 200 degrees, where meat's "collagen starts breaking down, making it more tender."

He was sleepless now and frazzled, perhaps thrown off his game by Jewish dietary law, which has been passed down through the millennia but is relatively new to competitive barbecue.

"It's cool," he said. "Very cool. It's a unique challenge that nobody else offers."