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" Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Award-winning food writer, B-list food personality, and noted polymath and deviant. The founder of Meatopia, he will answer all your questions on meat, food, food writing, relationships, restaurants, or cooking. He is also available for private tutorials. The second of our two-part special on barbecue advice for your Memorial Day. What&amp;#039;s the deal with competition barbecue? I am thinking about entering my first one next month, the New Hampshire Rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; Ribfest (just half a mile from my home.) Any tips? Have you ever cooked competition yourself? As a judge, what do you look for?Clarence B. Stockman, Merrimack, New Hampshire A big question, Clarence! I actually have cooked in a number of New England Barbecue Society events (the closest major circuit to New York). For those of you unfamiliar with what Clarence is talking about, barbecue contests are held all around the country, with thousands of portly men with circle beards trying to create the most perfect brisket, ribs, chicken, and pork butt conceivable. I heartily recommend it, if you have access to a mobile pit. The problem with competition BBQ, especially smaller contests like the one you mention, is the judges. It only takes a few hours to become a certified KCBS judge; you don&amp;#039;t need to have cooked, or more importantly, to have been to any of the great barbecue temples, like Kreuz Market in Texas or Scott&amp;#039;s BBQ in South Carolina, that define what barbecue is supposed to be like. The typical judge likes everything sweet, everything spoon-tender, and they like it all to shine with an unnatural ruby glow. The result is predictably awful, and the judges&amp;#039; bad taste has conditioned teams to cook bad barbecue through a form of culinary operant conditioning. I judged the Jack Daniels contest two years ago, the so-called Super Bowl of Barbecue, and it was like spending two weeks at Applebee&amp;#039;s. So go, compete, hang out, get drunk, play poker, but if you make great traditional BBQ, don&amp;#039;t expect to win. What are your recommendations for grills in budget, intermediate and high-end categories?Billy Barlow, Brooklyn, New York Billy, I addressed this very question in a big article I just did for the Wall Street Journal. Here&amp;#039;s the gist of it. On a cheap budget, just get a good Weber kettle-style grill, equipped with a Smokenator 100 insert. Solid, workable, reliable, and of elegant design. Two or three hundred more will get you a decent barrel smoker with an off-set firebox. The ability to add fuel without opening a cooking chamber is really the most important single feature in any smoker. When money is no object, you get the Bentley and Maybach of smokers, respectively: a heavy, double-door carousel smoker from J&amp;amp;amp;R Manufacturing, or a custom home pit of heavy steel, with counterweighted doors and all the other frills, by Dave Klose of Houston. The picture I ran last week, of the one cooking tool I would get if I had my wish, was a Klose. What is the deal with the pink ring?Bob and Dana Woolcott, Marietta, Georgia Bob and Dana are referring here not to a piece of jewelry, nor a communist conspiracy, but to the characteristic coloration near the surface of well-smoked barbecue. The &amp;quot;pink ring&amp;quot; was for many years a definitive proof of real smoking; if it wasn&amp;#039;t there, the meat has been merely roasted or whatever. But really, the pink ring is useless except as a visual cue. The coloration is caused by the buildup of nitric acid during the smoking process, but the reaction doesn&amp;#039;t occur in all barbecue products, and in any case, you can have a perfectly gorgeous pink ring on barbecue that is dry, bland, rancid, or any number of other bad things. One thing the pink ring does prove though, is that the meat is cooked all the way through. Mistaking a smoke ring for undercooking is probably the biggest barbecue gaffe you can make, and will instantly make you an object of derision to nearly everybody.  Why is it so important to create a humid environment in the BBQ cooking vessel (water pan) with cooking brisket and pork shoulder?Jesse Perez, San Antonio, TX It&amp;#039;s not that important. I am in the minority here, I know, but I don&amp;#039;t like water pans of any kind. I don&amp;#039;t like what they do to barbecue. If you want to keep your meat moist, open the cooker every forty minutes or so and spray them with a flavored &amp;quot;mop&amp;quot; to increase their flavor. If you like steaming meat, get a double boiler. You can even control the glazing process by decreasing the water content of the mop over time \u2014 the so-called &amp;quot;degradation&amp;quot; method used by my friend Robbie Richter. Do I need to use a thermometer?Ted Reader, Toronto Actually, Ted, you need two thermometers: one for the cooker, and one for the meat. Experienced barbecuers like you (and me) can usually tell by feel if meat is done, but for big pieces like brisket and pork butt, not to mention whole animals, you can&amp;#039;t rely on guesswork. And of course you need to know how hot your cooker is. So, yes. Most BBQ recipes are for ribs, chicken, brisket, and pork shoulder. Are there other cuts that are equally good in the smoker?Wallace Fard, Detroit, MI Absolutely! My favorite barbecue product may well be lamb ribs! Johnsonville Bratwursts take to smoke like peaches to cream. I&amp;#039;ve smoked everything from Spam to Peking Duck, and you should too. If it has parents, you can cook it in the smoker. Some people even smoke vegetables, but I haven&amp;#039;t gone that far yet. There are limits even to my deviance. I&amp;#039;ve used dry maple cuttings left over from winter firewood as fuel for our BBQ. Any downside to using these? Heat or health-wise?Patrick Benard, Montreal Patrick, hardwood \u2014 whether maple, apple, oak, hickory, or what have you \u2014 is the one true fuel for barbecue, and has no downside, other than being more harder to cook with than coals or pellets. (It&amp;#039;s also harder to have a real girlfriend, rather than a lifelike mannequin with brushable hair.) I like that, as a Canadian, you are using maple; local indigenous hardwood gives barbecue much needed terroir, the flavors of home and hearth. I would use whole cut firewood pieces, though, rather than cuttings; you&amp;#039;ll get a steadier heat. Is it true high-sugar BBQ sauce breaks down the meat?\u2028Steve Plotka, Margate, NJ Not true at all, Steve. All sugary BBQ sauce does is turn sticky and nasty in the cooker, unless judiciously diluted with beer or cider. If you want to break down meat, you need to marinate it with an enzymatic agent like unripe papaya for a day or more ahead of time. What do you pair with barbecue? Wine? IPA? Or something else?Andy Shernoff, New York City Personally, I don&amp;#039;t wine or beer with barbecue. I only drink orange soda with my barbecue, or sweet tea. Barbecue is salty; you need something sweet and refreshing with it. It&amp;#039;s also filling, so beer makes no sense at all. Wine is an interesting idea. It would have to be a full-bodied, round, a little fruity maybe, and with just enough acid to cut the meat smoke. I recommend Grand-Cru Montrachet. Chefs have finally embraced the greasy smoke and spice magic of America&amp;#039;s true cuisine. I am a bit afraid of BBQ fusion and the reckless bastardization of time-honored BBQ dogma. True carne concern or baseless drivel from a BBQ fundamentalist?\u2028Burger Guy, Boston I feel you, Burger Guy. I was a BBQ fundamentalist for many years myself. But change is not always for the worse, and barbecue, like any form of human endeavor, tends towards improvement over time. Stasis is rare and almost never a good thing. I just wrote a big article in The Wall Street Journal on this very subject. Sure, the modernist barbecue of The Granary or Tremont 647 may seem decadent or effete; I get that. But it&amp;#039;s also great. My feeling is that, unless you are Rick Schmidt or Rodney Scott, a recognized titan of traditional BBQ, there is no reason not to strive for innovations, even if they are small and incremental.  Have a question? Write askeatlikeaman@esquire.com! 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